Design: Two Jira instances in Data Center

[Dave Thyssen]

Hi all,

I'm looking at designing a solution for putting two Jira instances (running on separate server versions atm) into 1 Data Center clustered solution.

Obviously we would like to keep the Jira instances separate (different company departments), now I'm guessing this is possible seeing this article: https://confluence.atlassian.com/jira/running-multiple-instances-of-jira-on-one-machine-222200571.html

But just wanted to verify if I have to take anything else into account when going to Data Center version? I need separate ports for Jira and Tomcat I'm thinking. Is there any best practices or docs I've missed somewhere? I just install the first node, put it in the cluster, configure both instances on this node and then add nodes to the cluster, is that the very basics of it?

Thank you in advance!

[Matthias Gaiser _K15t_ · Accepted solution]

Hi @Dave Thyssen,

so you have two Jira instances right now and want to combine them into 1 Jira Data Center?

As @Alexey Matveev stated, one Jira Data Center will share the whole configuration among all nodes. There is no way to treat the different nodes as different Jira instances from a user point of view.

So, the main question would be: What are you trying to achieve in combining the two Jira instances in 1 Jira Data Center installation? Do you only want to administer 1 Jira? Do you want to achieve high availability? Do you want to keep it separate because most of the users are different as well?

I can see two ways to go:

• Keep the two instances separate as they are. You can still run them on the same hardware based on the article you linked.
• Merge the two Jira instances into one Jira (Data Center) instance. You can still control based on different permissions who is able to see which projects. You can also connect multiple ADs to one Jira.

What do you try to achieve?

Cheers,
Matthias.

[Dave Thyssen]

Hi Mathias,

The goal is to have a HA environment for Jira and housing the now 2 separate Jira instances in this environment. The reason they are separate is because they are two different departments of this company, they need to stay separate for lots of reasons. They should not be able to see each others projects and such, so maybe permissions is enough, I just want to make sure that it is feasible as we would like to avoid having two separate data center licenses/setups.

Kr,

Dave

[Matthias Gaiser _K15t_]

Hi Dave,

alright. If you want to have high availability and this in a scalable way, I would recommend a single Data Center setup and control the access to the different areas with permissions.

If you want to discuss the other reasons (besides the data visibility in more detail), feel free to post them here so that the community can comment on them and help you in order to tailor a solution to your needs.

Alternatively, you could also consult a solution partner in your area in order to discuss your detailed requirements with them. They would also be able to help you migrate your data in the target Jira instance.

Cheers,
Matthias.

[Dave Thyssen]

Hi Matthias,

Thanks, I figured as much that it would have to be permissions, thanks for the confirmation.

I have another question, not sure if I should post it separately, but could you tell me what the use of the admin/power user node in this setup is for: https://www.atlassian.com/blog/jira-software/scale-jira-software-10000-users-2

It's a separate node, not in de load balancers. Just wondering if it has any special tasks besides maintenance and maybe installing plugins or something?

Thank you kindly,

Dave

[Matthias Gaiser _K15t_]

Hi Dave,

my understanding of this is that the admin/power user node are used for actions which require a lot of resources in terms of processing power or memory. An example could be if you use eazyBI for reporting. In this app you can configure a node where the heavy tasks are being executed which could then be the admin/power user node.

But maybe someone else has also some thoughts on it?

Cheers,
Matthias.

[Dave Thyssen]

Hi Matthias,

That confirms my thoughts and suspicion as well, thank you kindly for the response. I will close this question for now.

Thanks again!

Dave

[Alexey Matveev]

Hello,

As far as I understand you need two different Jira instances with different configurations. If so, then have a look at federating Jira instances:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/enterprise/federating-jira-managing-multiple-instances-461504624.html

Jira Data Center is needed if you have a high load on your Jira instance. All Jira Data Center nodes have the same configuration. They are not different.

[Dave Thyssen]

Hi,

Thanks, yes, I came across federating before, but I was wondering if this really separates the instances, as in people of the one department can't get to information stored in the other instance. Separate logins and login pages, maybe separate AD/LDAP. And that while the nodes are running in clustered mode using Data Center licensing.

[Alexey Matveev]

Federating instances are needed, if you have two different Jira instances with different projects, different configurations. You can read about it in the link, I gave you.

Data Center exists only for high loaded Jira instances. All users, projects, configurations are same on all instances.

[Dave Thyssen]

Thanks Alexey, I will look into federation a little more in depth.