Jira Data Center Setup

[Siddique Afraaz N]

We are trying to setup a clustered Jira Data Center for Testing an Application

1. On Setting up the Shared Folder. I have a entered the following in the cluster.properties:
    jira.shared.home = \\172.xx.xx.xx\sharedhome

    But after restarting the server and checking the System Info, the Shared Folder location is something like /172.xx.xx.xxsharedhome and a new folder with this name is created automatically in my drive. Why is this happening? Am I doing something wrong.

Turns out Jira doesn't need the Windows Explorer Path and and the backward slashes are not recognized correctly. Thanks to @Tim Scheurenbrand

2. Even after setting up the cluster.properties and the single node is visible in the clustering tab, The Installation Type in System Info show 'Standalone' and not data center. Am I missing any step here?

Answered by @Noni Khutane  The clustering is turned on in my instance and Installation Type will always be 'Standalone' it seems.

3. Is load balancer mandatory even for testing a clustered data center? if so, is there any detailed guide to setup a simple load balancer for no more than two nodes?

[Noni Khutane]

Hi Siddique

What installation method did you use for Jira?
What OS are you installing Jira on?

Here is a comprehensive guide for installing Jira as a cluster.
https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver/installing-jira-data-center-938846870.html

[Siddique Afraaz N]

I used an EXE for WINDOWS Installation downloaded from the Jira Website.

I have followed the same document shared by you for this installation but still no success.

[Tim Scheurenbrand]

Are you sure, you should use backward slashes in the resource locator? Have you tried using forward slashes like //172.xx.xx.xx/sharedhome?

[Siddique Afraaz N]

I couldn't access the folder in Windows explorer with a forward slash, It redirects me to a web browser but haven't tried changing it in the properties will try and update here.

Edit: Thanks, after changing it to a forward slash, Jira now accesses the network shared folder.

[Noni Khutane]

Did you deploy a NFS share?
Is there a reason you want to install Jira as a cluster instead of a single node?

The Installation type will show standalone for all installations in System info. 
Check system Info if clustering is on.

Single node installation:
https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver/running-jira-data-center-on-a-single-node-993929595.html

[Siddique Afraaz N]

Yes I did deploy an NFS Share.
Well we are developing an app for Jira and need to see how it works on a clustered data center and need answers for certain questions like whether we need to install the app separately for each node? and have to test the app before releasing.
I was able to set it up for a single node with no problems though with clustering on.

[Wayne Harvey]

You definitely want to have a Load Balancer in front of the cluster, otherwise every connection will only go to one node, and there is no need to use the cluster.

Atlassian provides some very good Load Balancer information found at the following URL's

https://confluence.atlassian.com/enterprise/load-balancer-configuration-options-935383760.html

https://confluence.atlassian.com/enterprise/jira-data-center-load-balancer-examples-781200827.html

For our University we use a Big IP F5 Load balancer in front of a 4 node cluster sharing a single Virtual IP/ DNS entry so that the incoming connections work in a round robin format.

You do not want to build the application on each server individually, you would build the app against the Load Balanced site so that the data is correctly stored in the database and the shared home receives all the necessary plugins, etc you want to use with the app within Jira.

However, you do not necessarily need a clustered environment to build an application, a single node Data Center environment works very well for a Development environment and load testing is close under both single node and dual node clusters.