The latest in Atlassian Server and Data Center products: a webinar round-up and Q&A

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We understand as the adoption of products and practices like Agile, DevOps, and ITSM expand across teams, you need to strike the balance between providing your team's autonomy, increasing organizational growth, while still maintaining the right controls over your Atlassian applications. 

On top of investing in improving the reliability and performance your organization demands, we are making other investments to ensure you can increase team productivity to deliver higher quality products and services faster than ever.

We recently ran a webinar sharing some of these latest improvements in Atlassian Server and Data Center products.

In this webinar, Keshav Puttaswamy, Head of Product Management for Server and Data Center, shared how we are supporting you in your next chapter of growth. You'll learn about:

• New Server & Data Center features
• The investments we're making to support the scaling of your teams, applications, and infrastructure
• How we're making individual teams more productive

Here is a round up of some Q&A we had during the webinar! We'd love to hear any other questions, thoughts, or ideas in the comments below! Haven't watched the webinar yet? Check it out now and join in the discussion after!

General:

Are there any best practices or guidance for managing Data Center?

Yes, there is a lot! We have documentation on things like sizing guides, testing frameworks, and much more. Check out some of the following resources:

• Best Practices for Atlassian Data Center
  • Performance testing frameworks
  • Node sizing overview
  • Migration Plan

When should I consider moving from Server to Data Center?

The short answer to this question is: it depends. A number of factors can come into play such as the current number of users, expected future growth, criticality of the tooling to your organization's work, and many other specific requirements that organizations operating at scale need to meet or solve for.

If you deploy any of the Server products at enterprise scale and run a mission-critical instance, Data Center is most likely a good fit for you. I encourage you check out one of our whitepapers: "Server to Data Center: The Tipping Point". It's a great resource for understanding some of these factors that influence when it is the right time for you to switch.

What is the difference between an Enterprise Release and a regular Data Center release?

Every Atlassian product has three different release types: Platform, Feature, and Bug fix. They're described in greater detail in Release terminology, but you can easily differentiate them by their version number.

An Enterprise release is a designated feature release that will continue to receive backported security updates and critical bug fixes throughout the standard 2-year support window. Enterprise releases are available for both Server and Data Center. Learn more about the differences and other frequently asked questions here.

Are there any performance measurement tools for the Data Center products?

We have a number of resources to help you monitor and manage the performance of your instance. Check out all the resources here.

Do you have an estimated timeframe for the next Enterprise releases and Platform releases (i.e Jira 8.0)?

While we can't share specific dates yet, you can stay up to date on the most current enterprise releases, please visit this page. To get updates on all minor and major releases (including enterprise and platform releases), follow our blog or the enterprise community for the most recent announcements.

How are Data Center apps approved?

Atlassian Marketplace vendors must build and test their apps to meet the new approval standards, and submit all test results to Atlassian for review prior to earning the designation of "Data Center approved app."

There are two parts to our validation process which includes:

1. Completing a 100+ question readiness assessment
2. Completing a testing process to evaluate apps in an environment that simulates a large scale Data Center instance

Atlassian will then evaluate the readiness of an app and make the decision as to whether to designate as Data Center approved. Atlassian does not conduct the testing ourselves; all testing of apps is conducting by the app vendor. We hope to have new Data Center apps will be approved every week. For updates on the status of specific apps, please reach out to the Marketplace vendor. 

For more details on Data Center approved app criteria, please see Developing Apps for Atlassian Data Center Products or learn more about frequently asked questions regarding Data Center approved apps here.

Mobile Apps:

How do I get access to Jira Mobile Apps? When are they coming?

Please sign up at atlassian.com/jira-server-mobile to stay up to date and to be the first to get access.

Can your mobile apps authenticate using certificate?

In the latest version of the iOS and Android Confluence Server apps, you can connect to the app using either HTTP or HTTPS.

If you're using HTTPS your proxy must allow TLS 1.2 traffic. This is an iOS requirement that we've chosen to implement for both the iOS and Android Confluence Server apps to prevent confusion (for example where one device can log in, and another cannot). Ideally, your certificate should be from a trusted Certificate Authority. If you have certificate that is self-signed, or from an unknown Certificate Authority (for example, you are your own CA), users may still be able to use the app by manually installing your certificate on their device. See our Knowledge base article for more information on how to do this. Additional documentation around our Confluence Server mobile apps is available here.

The same will be true for the Jira Server mobile apps as well. Interested in the upcoming Jira Software mobile apps? Sign up here to be the first notified when it is available!

Project Archiving:

Why cant you archive service desk projects?

Project archiving is supported in Jira Service Desk Data Center 3.14, which we released in July 2018. As mentioned in the webinar, we are working on supporting issue-level archiving which will help with those longer-running service projects.

Is native project archiving coming to Jira Server or only Data Center version?

The archiving functionality just described in the webinar is for Data Center only. If you are interested in existing archiving capabilities for Jira Software Server, I encourage you check out the following documentation.

Will project archiving help me meet my organization's compliance and legal requirements?

This depends on a customer's compliance and legal policies. Once projects are archived, the content of their issues will not change, but global schemas like permissions, workflows, and priorities will change if they are updated at the global level. We cannot guarantee projects will be fully immutable (no changes whatsoever).

Project archiving is focused on solving the top two customer requests: archiving for performance and to reduce end-user visual clutter.

Other:

Is Custom Fields Optimizer available in Jira Data Center only, or will it be made available in Server too?

The Custom Fields Optimizer is only available in Jira Software Data Center. It was recently released in August 2018 in Jira Software 7.12. Learn more about the Custom Fields Optimizer here.

Apart from Confluence, will Jira get Zero Downtime Upgrades?

Jira Software Data Center currently offers zero downtime upgrades today, which allows admins to shut down and upgrade their instance one node at a time while users can continue working without interruption. Jira Software 7.3 is the minimum version you need to be running to be able to use this upgrade process. Please read the following documentation to learn more.

Confluence Data Center's read-only mode allows users to view, search and navigate pages, blogs, and attachments during while admins perform maintenance related work like upgrades or site migrations. However, in read-only mode, users do not have the ability to edit. You can learn more about the list of limited actions, tips, and things you should consider before using read-only mode in the release notes.

Would it be possible to change themes on different portals in Jira Service Desk or is it still based on 1 theme for all?

No, at the moment you can't change themes for different portals in Jira Service Desk. Please vote and/or watch for updates on this request here.

Can Crowd Server be used with Jira and Confluence Data Center?

Yes, Crowd Server can be used with Jira Software Data Center and Confluence Data Center. However, if you are using Jira Software Data Center or Confluence Data Center to ensure high availability, we recommend using Crowd Data Center as well to further enforce the same level of availability.