Attachment Migration from Database to Filesystem

[Stephen Gurnick]

I am running Confluence 4.3.3 with a MySQL DB. Our attachments are stored in the database and I'm planning on migrating them out to the filesystem.

I was able to complete this successfully a few times using our test environment. When the migration completes in /var/atlassian/application-data/confluence/attachments I see a directory titled attachment-backup-<DATE> which is 3.3GB. This appears to be a subset of my attachments directory which is 3.4GB.

I was wondering if this is something I need to keep around or is this safe to delete. I have other means of backing-up attachments so if it doesn't hurt anything to remove this, I like to free up the space.

Also, I'm performing this migration since in the latest version of Confluence, while it's still supported to store attachments in the database, the functionality is deprecated and it seems using the filesystem has become "best practice". Is this indeed the case? Curious as to what others are doing for attachment storage in the latest versions of Confluence.

Thank you for your help.

[Stephen Gurnick · Accepted solution]

I was able to perform this migration successfully following the instructions provided here: Confluence Attachment Migration - The Safe Way. At the completion of the migration, I did not have any missing attachments and the back-up folder I mentioned in the question did not appear.

[Bruna Griebeler]

Hi Stephen,

We do recommend to maintain the attachments on the database when running Confluence Cluster. If it's not the case, you can proceed with the attachments migration on production.

We always recommend you to maintain a backup of the database after it, in case you face any missing attachment.

Worst case scenario follow this instructions: https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CONFKB/Resolve+Missing+Attachments+in+Confluence

[Stephen Gurnick]

Hi Bruna,

We are not running Confluence in a clustered environment - it's a standalone instance.

With this in mind is it acceptable to leave the attachments in the database? Or is it considered best practice to store attachments in the file system in the latest versions of Confluence?

Also, do you have any insight into the attachment-backup directory that gets created after the migration? Is this something I need to maintain or can I remove?

Thank you.