Access Jira service desk from Jira core license

[Suhail Wani]

I have Jira core and Jira service desk installed on two different servers. Both the instances are integrated through application link. My question is, can i access Jira Service Desk from Jira Core License. I have only 50 users license for Jira Service Desk. This will be somewhat like a Collaborator role where users can have restricted access. Moreover, when i try to access JSD ticket from Jira Core, it asks for the login

[Susan Hauth [Jira Queen] · Accepted solution]

Hello Suhail,

Not sure why you want to split your service desk and core on different servers.  Jira was made to sit on one server and then collaboration would then not be a problem. Also I believe it will save you money as you would pay for 500 core licenses and then on top of that ONLY licenses for the users acting as agents on the service desk projects.

We run 1 server instance, with 500 user license and 125 agent licenses and we support 50 projects of which 12 of them are service desk projects for both internal and external customers.

Hope that helps

Susan

[Suhail Wani]

Thanks Susan for your suggestions. We don't want to run into any performance issues in future. That is why we chose to have two different servers.

[Susan Hauth [Jira Queen]]

Hi Suhail,

I'm not sure that's a valid reason.   Jira scales quite well, and if you get really large there is always Data Centre.  You might want to investigate that a bit more.

Susan

[Daniel Eads]

Hey Suhail,

Just backing up what Susan said - you're not going to see performance issues around the 500 user mark if the server you're running Jira / JSD on is appropriately resourced and has a good amount of Java heap. We have a couple articles designed to help you figure out your resourcing requirements:

• Jira Data Center size profiles is intended for more recent releases of Jira but should help you consider what you're doing on Server (effectively 1 node) even if you're not using Jira Data Center
• Jira Sizing Guide was written for Jira 6.4 but should give you a general ballpark for resource starting points even in newer versions.

We generally see administrators consolidating instances in cases like this, as having separate instances can lead to additional overhead in linking the instances and keeping both separate instances updated with recent Jira releases. It's certainly possible to run them separately (as you are doing now!) but most administrators we work with opt for the simplified administration of just one instance for that type of use-case.

As Nic mentions as well, consolidating will save you some money in licensing costs.

Cheers,
Daniel | Atlassian Support

[Alexey Matveev · Accepted solution]

Hello,

As far as I understand your question. The users have a Jira Core license on a different server from Jira Service Desk, that is why these users can not access the Service Desk instance. These users need to have a valid license on the Jira Service Desk server.

[Suhail Wani]

We have 500 core Jira licenses, can these be split across multiple servers? Would federated servers help?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

No, you need a licence for each server, and unless you have "Enterprise licencing" (aimed at tens of thousands of users with many disparate services), they have to be per user of that server.

If you set up a Jira Core on server 1 and Jira Service Desk on server 2, and you want 500 users to be able to access each of them, you need two licences for 500 people, even though they might well be the same users. 

It would be cheaper (and automatically provide the integration in your main question) to have a single server with 500 users on it.

[Suhail Wani]

Thanks Nic for your suggestions.

[Fides IT Admin Account]

This can not be really true: JIRA Service Desk (SD), Jira Software and Jira Core are independent applications with independent licenses. 

For Jira  JIRA Service Desk you only need licenses for you agents but not for the service desk customers. 

Yes, if you wanted to give your jira core users direct access to  the Service Desk Project (not via portal )you would need additional core license's on that server. However permission granted to a Core users in a Service Desk project are almost always overruled by the Service Desk, Thus Core users can do almost nothing in a Service Desk project - no matter what you grant them.

We evaluate to give external customers access Jira SD Portal and evaluate the possibility to split  servers (one Service Desk, One Jira Software) for security reasons (Firewall).  

Why should this not work?