storing index on ramdisk - Need help

[Girish Shenoy]

Hi All,

We have a large JIRA hosted on prem with over 1 million issues. We had lot of performance issues in the past, as a result, one of our consultants suggested we go with SSD as ramdisk to store index. Ever since then our JIRA performance is drastically improved. One of the challenges that I still need help with is on index backup on restoration.

If we reboot the server, we will end up losing the index that is stored on the RAMDISK, as a result, we will have to go through a production downtime of 3 or more hours to lock and reindex. 

Can anyone please tell me if you have a similar config. Also let me know how can we perform a quick backup of index to another drive so that in the event of server reboot, we can copy the index from a backup location. Any help in this regard is highly appreciated.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

This is a bit confused - an SSD is not a RAM disk.  An SSD is a solid state drive which retains data written to it when powered off.  A RAM disk is a disk held in volatile RAM which loses all its data when it loses power.

RAM disks are by far the fastest option for a JIRA index, but because they're volatile, you have to rebuild the index on every reboot.

SSDs are slower than RAM disks, but still a lot faster than standard hard drives.  If the three hour rebuild is an issue, a good option is to move off the RAM disk and onto a local SSD.  Reboots will not lose the index then.

Your last suggestion is also valid if you want to continue to use a RAM disk.  On an orderly shut down, stop JIRA, copy the whole index directory to a non-volatile storage (hard disk or even an SSD if you want), then, after reboot, when the RAM disk is available, copy it back.  This is faster than re-indexing, but still may not be as fast to restore as using a normal disk or an SSD