6.4 to 7.6 upgrade : new JIRA is very SLOW

Question

Hi,

We upgraded our JIRA instance (2000 users) from 6.4.14 to 7.6.1 and everything would be perfect except huge slowness during the "Log in" phase. For instance, when a user wants to log into JIRA s/he enters a username, then password, press button and waits between 1 and 5 minutes to see the System dashboard. It is super slow. Watching issues also takes time but it shorter than authentication.

We tried many things to fix the issue such as:
- setting Xmin and Xmax to 4gb
- removal of plugin caches 
- verification of database parameters
- verification of Base URL
- verification of reverse proxy configuration because our instance is hidden behind that. The delay is the same when we get into JIRA without proxy.

After analyzing almost all threads on this forum and documentation, we are running out of ideas, what else can be wrong with this new JIRA version ?

In turn, operations on the System tab works quite quickly.

Regards,

Kian Stack Mumo Systems · Answer

So every application of JIRA has a recommended upgrade path from one version to another. I've done the upgrades before, so I know that for an upgrade to version 7.6.1 from 6.4 the following is required. This is just for the JIRA application itself, and does not take into account things such as DB versions, JAVA versions, ect.

Upgrade 6.4 to 7.0.
Upgrade from 7.0 to 76.1. Keep in mind, this second part may change if the version gets too much. In general it's important to follow the following steps:

1) Read the upgrade and release notes for any version that you want to upgrade to/past. In your case this would include all major versions between 6.4 and 7.6.1. In the upgrade notes for JIRA 7.6 at the very bottom, you will see that it tells you that you must fist upgrade to 7.0 before upgrading to JIRA 7.6.

2) Verify that your current resources such as Database version and Java version are supported on the version you are moving to. If they are not, make sure to have a plan for how you are going to get to a supported version of those. Will you perform an upgrade of JIRA to 7.0 and then upgrade database to a higher version that is supported on both 7 and 7.6 before going to 7.6? Think about what strategies you can implement to have support all the way through of database, ect.

3) Check your addons for support in higher version as well. Try to make sure that you can upgrade those smoothly.

Here are some resources I used to com eup with this.
https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftware/jira-software-7-6-x-upgrade-notes-938027185.html - Upgrade notes for JIRA 7.6
https://confluence.atlassian.com/ug/jira-software-upgrade-matrix-933696761.html
https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver071/supported-platforms-802592168.html

Keep in mind none of these are specific to your system. You will have to do your own investigation and fact finding into what is required for your upgrade path. I've handled these before and there typically is not one "cookie cutter" answer, these are just some strategies that I have found helpful when preparing for and outlining an upgrade. Yours may have additional dependencies or steps that need to be taken.

Rafal Sojka · Answer

Thank you for response. We had to roll back to 6.4 because of this performance issue. We will collect all errors from the logs and contact directly with the support. In the meantime, I would like to ask you what is the best, standard way to upgrade from 6.4 to 7.6.1. Should we go through each major release 7.0, 7.1 and so on or there is a faster way ?

Thank you,
Rafal

Kian Stack Mumo Systems · Answer

Hey Rafal,

There are a couple of things that might be helpful. We can provide general strategies, but without a detailed view of logs, plugins, ect, there isn't too much we can do. Upgrading from 6.4 to 7.6.1 is a big step, and would actually require a multi-stage upgrade. I'd recommend opening a ticket with Atlassian support. https://support.atlassian.com/contact/#/

In addition to that I would begin by verifying that all of the tools that you are using are supported for the latest version. For example, is your Java version supported for the new version of JIRA, is your DB version supported? Moving up so many major versions may have caused something which was supported to no longer be. I would also make sure that you check the logs while user logins are happening to see what is going on.

There are many strategies that can be taken for troubleshooting, but ultimately you may have to work through these issues with Atlassian support.

Thanks,

Kian