Disaster Recovery Configuration for Jira and Confluence

Zach Newman January 8, 2013

I am planning on setting up a cold standby DR server to mirror our Confluence and Jira server. The filesystem will be fully replicated as well as the databases. However, I have a few configuration questions.

The base url will not need to be changed, correct? As long as the DNS record points to the new DR server all links should redirect. I don't wan't to have to worry about configuration files pointing back to the production site somehow.

Does the server id need to be changed? Same with the license?

It looks like application inks should be fine as well. But I noticed when using Jira as the User Server for Confluence, Fisheye, etc. that they are configured by IP. Can a url be used instead? Otherwise these will fail.

Thanks!

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Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
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January 8, 2013

Correct on the base url. Check your hosts file on the replicated server though.

For the server ID, cheat. Install the development license you're entitled to on it instead of the real licence and it'll work fine with a different server ID. Disaster recovery/failover is one of the things your dev licence is intended for. This also makes failing back a lot more simple too, as there's no fooling around with server IDs!

Ah, no, application links explicitly rely on IP addresses, so you'll need to change them. In fact, they do work with urls, but not very well in my experience. I tried it on a test system, and noticed slowness (to the point of timeouts), gave up and went back to raw IPs. This was with an older version of Jira, but I don't think it will have changed much (Which reminds me, I need to test this stuff with IPV6 soon...)

Renjith Pillai
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January 8, 2013

+1 for that Application Links part. It's a bit messy around that and it will mostly fail. You will have to recreate it.

Confluence has builtin clustering capabilties - check out https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Confluence+Cluster+Installation

Zach Newman January 8, 2013

Functionality will remain the same with the dev license? Will licensed plugins still work? Thanks!

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
Community Leader
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Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
January 8, 2013

I can't speak for the plugins, but Jira, Confluence, Greenhopper etc will work fine with a dev license. I've not yet found a plugin that objects, I think they may look at the license state of the system they're installed in.

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