Best Practice for server set up and upgrade paths

[Ben Taylor]

Hi

So we are currently working towards upgrading to the latest versions of JIRA and Confluence, hosted locally on our server. (We're currently on version 5.4.1 for both) We are also running FishEye and Crucible

We currently have SQL running off the same server, so we are looking at separating them.

We want to know what the best practice is for server set-up in regards to these. The ideal set-up for keeping our Atlassian software running at peak performance.

Also, need to be sure about the upgrade path from 5.4.1 to latest, can anyone help with that?

Thanks,

-Ben 

[Kalle Sirkesalo]

Hello,

First of when moving database if your using MySQL do be careful that your new database is also UTF-8 Binary collation and with InnoDB enabled in my.cnf

Secondly you should take a database dump and try to do the upgrade in a test virtual machine first. For example you can use Virtualbox to locally test the changes. 

So the upgrade itself works following (I will use JIRA as example):

1. Shutdown JIRA
2. Copy and tar/zip all the files for failover
3. take a database dump
4. Run the binary package
5. Check that your configurations are okay and start up JIRA

If you don't already have reverse proxy in front of your JIRA and Confluence you should see how those are setup and setup either nginx or Apache in front of your application. This is so the application doesn't have to run as root when being binded to port 80 and that the SSL connections get cut correctly and just in all ways a good way to setup any service. 

With you being so far behind on upgrades I would be extra careful and do it step by step in terms of JIRA first upgrade to version 6 and then to 7. Even if the documentation says otherwise I have noticed skipping major versions is usually an bad idea.

Stuff to be careful is that some plugins might turn into paid plugins etc. This again supports the test it on a test environment first see what works and what doesn't and design the upgrade outside of your business hours so others won't lose work over the upgrade. 

Also be careful with application links those can be trick every now and then.  

In terms of peak performance you want to have about 4 gigabytes of memory per about 2 thousand users in JIRA and same with confluence. Minimum recommended to use is 2 gigabytes

Some useful and less useful links: 

https://confluence.atlassian.com/jira/jira-installation-and-upgrade-guide-100303124.html

https://confluence.atlassian.com/jira/installing-jira-185729568.html

https://www.virtualbox.org/

https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirakb/integrating-jira-with-nginx-426115340.html