Optimizing confluence for a single user use case

[Nithya Sharabheshwarananda]

Hi,

I have a beginner license for confluence. I have a very old laptop, which after upgrade as 8GB ram and a SSD. There is nobody other than me expected to use this instance. Extremely rarely I might give access to instance to a couple of people for working on it remotely. For various reasons (such as frequent travel to places without internet, change in location, data security, lack of people in organization with the required expertise) this instance cannot be hosted on cloud or even on any local server. 

I would like to know how I can optimize this instance to run smoothly on my laptop.

Please see this screenshot. You can very easily make out that I cannot run anything when confluence is running. 

Changes that I have made

1. Reduced the Xms and Xmx JVM settings

rem set CATALINA_OPTS=-Xms1024m -Xmx1024m -XX:+UseG1GC %CATALINA_OPTS%
set CATALINA_OPTS=-Xms512m -Xmx512m -XX:+UseG1GC %CATALINA_OPTS%``

2. Disabled antivirus on the confluence installation folder, postgres database folder and confluence data folder. 

3. Disabled automated backups completely (intend to do manually) to save hard-disk space.

4. I can also disable synchrony if that helps, will it help?

5. Should I try a different JVM like GRAALVM of JDK13, will that help?

Please advice thank you.

[repi · Accepted solution]

Hi @Nithya Sharabheshwarananda ,

Running a confluence on a laptop is not an optimal solution.
The confluence belongs on a server!
Since this is not possible for various reasons, here are some of my experiences.
I run a confluence on a rock64 singl board computer in credit card format (RK3328 Quad-Core ARM Cortex A53 64-Bit Processor) with 4 GB RAM, 64 GB eMMC and 32 GB SD card.
Now to your configuration:
Your main problem is that the laptop is not running all the time.
The confluence will take 10-15 minutes to start.
On the individual points:
1. I would leave the xms and xmx memory at the standard values. It would be more important to replace windows with linux.
2. No antivirus program is required under linux
3. In your case, the backups can really be done manually.
However, on the same data medium as the confluence installation is counterproductive in the event of an accident.
4. Synchrony should definitely be switched off. This is only interesting on an installation where many team members work on a document at the same time.
5. I don't think that another JVM will make it all faster.
Use the confluence own java engine.

hth

[Nithya Sharabheshwarananda]

Thank you so much, this is exactly the kind of answer I was hoping for. Regarding replacing windows with Linux, that is a good idea, but I have my own inertia for migrating as I have been a windows user, for probably two decades. I have used both Linux and mac, but just too comfortable with windows.