Can you have two instances of JIRA on the same machine share the same installation directory?

[Sam Schlaak]

It seems that the only discrepancies lies within the port number defined in the server.xml file and the pointer to the JIRA Home directory found in the jira-application.properties file.

Is there any sort of work around to get the instances working off of the same installation directory?

[Sam Schlaak · Accepted solution]

I'd like to update this thread and let anyone else wondering this that it is possible to have two instances of JIRA working off of the same installation directory. Separate server.xml and logging.properties must be specified as well as separate location for the second instance's temp directory and a directory for the log outputs. These changes can be set as environmentals prior to calling Tomcat's startup script.

If you need more details, let me know and I'll help you out!

[Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]]

In the same installation directory? Or in the same machine?

You cannot share the installation directory or the home directory. But you can have two instances of JIRA running on different ports, pointing to different home folders.

[Sam Schlaak]

So each instance must have its own installation directory?

[Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]]

Yes. Each JIRA installation comes with its own tomcat. You can get a single tomcat and install the war version of JIRA but it is not supported anymore. And having two different versions will probably cause other conflicts!

[Sam Schlaak]

Mainly to save memory. If there's only two files that are specific to an instance, then why copy every other file? 

[Boris Georgiev _Appfire_]

Why would you want to do that at all ?

[Daniel Wester]

Technically you probably could - you can set the JIRA home for as an env variable. But there might be issues with temp file conflicts etc. and my guess is that support will ask you to undo it if you run into any issues.

Can I ask why would you want to? It seems to be more problems than it's worth...

[Sam Schlaak]

Mainly to save memory. If there's only two files that are specific to an instance, then why copy every other file? I agree that it may might be more trouble, but space saved is money saved.