Jira Software Cloud Infrastructure

[Gary Athaide]

We are planning to migrate our Jira installation from server to cloud but our client would like to have a network diagram that shows the communication between our site and the  Atlassian Cloud and database.

Is such an overview available anywhere?

(Authentication will more than likely be done via AD Sync.)

Thank you.

[Nic Brough _Adaptavist_ · Accepted solution]

Not really, as it's incredibly simple.  In your case the diagram is as simple as

AD <-> Atlassian Access

Clients <-> Atlassian Cloud Services

Beyond those, you don't care.  The database, connection between Access and the services and outgoing emails etc, you have no access to, as you have no need for it.

[Gary Athaide]

Thank you.  That's really my thought as well.

Outside of perhaps the integration of AD <-> Atlassian Access for authentication, I'm not sure what else there is to care about.  I suspect, but don't know for sure, that knowledge of underlying infrastructure wasn't a factor for them in the migrations to other SaaS applications such as Office 365.

Since you're showing those as two separate "diagrams", would it be correct to say that somewhere in the login process that Atlassian Cloud Services and Atlassian Access communicate to authenticate a client during login?

[Nic Brough _Adaptavist_]

Yeah, when you're buying a service instead of a system, it does mean you can abstract away the behind-the-scenes stuff a bit.  Not because it doesn't matter, but because you can't see it or do anything with it as the end-user.  It all goes a bit "black box"

You're absolutely right about Access and Cloud systems - that's one of the connections inside the black box.  AD provides users to Access (outside the box, so you do care about that connection), then Access acts as the account manager for all the Atlassian Cloud systems inside the box.

The bit I am not 100% sure on is the actual authentication step.  If you connect a Server/DC Atlassian thing to AD for users, then I know that while it caches a lot of the AD info, whenever a user goes through a password check, the system is directly checking with AD - it does not cache user credentials, it always asks AD.  I do not know if Atlassian Access does the same, it could be caching something.  I suspect it does no caching and asks AD, but I cannot be sure.

[Gary Athaide]

Thanks again.  I'll put together a basic diagram for the customer, perhaps wrapping the Access and Cloud Services in a "black box."  If more detail ends up being required, perhaps we'll need to set up some kind of walk through / overview with Atlassian.