What needs to be backed up in Jira/Bitbucket/Confluence/Bamboo

Jason Unrein

The documentation for the four mentioned products do not clearly state what all needs to be backed up when a full VM backup is not an option

For Bitbucket, there is at least the documentation and scripts provided that make me believe I just need to back up the BITBUCKET_HOME and the database but there are other Bitbucket files in the filesystem (ie /var/Atlassian which i assume isn't needed but not clearly stated).  I'm left with an left of uncertainty of what I need to back up so I can successfully restore the system.

For Jira/Confluence/Bamboo, there is even less information and more confusion. 

It would be very beneficial if Atlassian could provide a detailed list of directories/files that need to be backed up, which are optional and which are not needed.

BTW, these are all internally hosted versions and because of the comments in the instructions:

 For production use, it is strongly recommended that for regular backups, you use native database backup tools instead of JIRA's XML backup service.

I am very reluctant to use Atlassians built in backup tools.

Update: to point out my confusion.  The JIRA documentation for the backup states

It’s crucial that you back up your JIRA application’s data directory, which is a sub-directory of the JIRA application home directory (jira-home for short). The data directory contains application data for your JIRA instance. For example, issue attachments are stored in the <jira-home>\data\attachments directory.

But then in the restore document it states

Replace the JIRA Home directory with the backed up files.

That gives me the feeling that the documentation is incomplete and inconsistent since no where does it state to back up the Home folder.  It only states to backup data and also maybe cache.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

The "restore" document you are reading is probably about a different restoration situation from the one you are thinking of - there's several reasons to restore and different ways to get there.

I find the docs aren't that unclear, and actually simplify it.  They tell you that you will need

• The home directory
• The database
• The installation directory
• The missing part - they don't explicitly mention that you might want to copy the stop/start scripts in your operating system e.g. /etc/init.d.

It gets more complex when you look at what you want to do with them.  There's one case where you only need the home directory.  You can technically lose parts of the home and installation directory and still recover your entire system without any loss. 

Most restorations I do don't bother with the installation directory (and this is probably the case in the doc you're reading).  I install an empty JIRA, make sure it works, then restore the database and home directories over the empty stuff.