Installing JIRA and Confluence on the same server

[chris hoerske]

I've found documentation pertaining to this but I have some questions.. I already have Confluence installed. As I understand it comes with Tomcat by default. I'm using MySQL as my external database. Now.. I also just installed JIRA. Does this mean Confluence and JIRA are sharing the same Tomcat container? I found the documentation HERE pertaining to running JIRA behind Apache but I'm confused. How do this work and do I have to uninstall JIRA based on what I mentioned above?

[chris hoerske · Accepted solution]

Ryan cleared it up for me.. Thanks for all of your help on this everyone.. Maybe I'm a little slow but I tried to make Ryan's actual comment the answer.. Anyway.. Ryan cleared it up below.

[ryan goodwin]

(Provided for answer)

You said it yourself:

I have my primary web server (different server) with virtual directories

You've already got a proxy directing traffic back to the separate applications. Each application runs inside it's own tomcat instance on it's own ports - so they can run fine on the same machine as you have already discovered. Depending on how you want to access them determines whether or not you need apache or any other kind of proxying.

[chris hoerske]

As I understand Apache will act as a HTTP proxy allows both Tomcat installs to presented as a single port.. I don't mind JIRA and Confluence being on seperate ports in regards to portals facing the internet or the end user.. So... Then we get back to the fact about being able to perform maintenance on eithe one without affecting the other. I just ran the stop-confluence.sh script and was able to stop confluence without messing with JIRA. So.. It seems by installs are completely seperate. So, aside from sharing a single port why do I even need Apache? I'm a little confused to why I even need it.

-thanks.

[chris hoerske]

Nic cleared up the benefits for multi tenancy installs...

[chris hoerske]

Okay.. I was trying to save resources by sharing a VM for multiple installs but it seems isolating it will be better. Plus with the version of VSA and VMWare I'm upgrading to I'll be able to have VM's moved automatically based on available resources.

[chris hoerske]

Ryan understads my design.. It seems good..

Maybe I needed to clarify earlier but Ryan gets what I'm doing. Initially I was concerned that I didn't have two different installs. Since I do then my tomcat design is sound. I'm not sharing a single container. The virtual directories I have are from a different server. Our website is hosted on this server.. So.. I simply created virtual directories pointing to each URL/port number.. This other server already existed and will always exist on a different server.. So, aside from aesthetics (different port numbers being displayed) I should be good.. Of crouse I can setup Apache using the proxy but I don't see a difference aside from different ports being shown in the browser. I can start/stop JIRA or Confluence without affecting each other. So.. This seems like a sound config..

Thanks for everyone's input. Confluence and JIRA are awesome and so far a great community.

[Fabio Racobaldo _Herzum_]

Hi Chris,

if you installed JIRA Standalone, it is using a different Tomcat, that is embedded into JIRA INST Folder. You can setup the apache proxy without problem and configure proxy rules for JIRA and Confluence even if they are using two different containers.

I hope this helps.

Fabio

[chris hoerske]

As I understand Apache will act as a HTTP proxy allows both Tomcat installs to be presented as a single port.. I don't mind JIRA and Confluence being on seperate ports in regards to portals facing the internet or the end user.. So... Then we get back to the fact about being able to perform maintenance on either one without affecting the other. I just ran the stop-confluence.sh script and was able to stop confluence without messing with JIRA. So.. It seems my installs are completely seperate. So, aside from sharing a single port why do I even need Apache? I'm a little confused to why I even need it.

-thanks.

[Daniel Wester]

If you're running on Linux you'll need it in order to get things on port 80.

[chris hoerske]

Daniel,

As mentioned above I don't care about the apps being on port 80.. I have a virtual directory from a different webserver pointing users to www.mydomain.com/team. This takes them to Confluence. When at Confluence at the top left hand corner you can select different apps.. So , they can toggle between Confluence and JIRA. Maybe I'm missing something.. I'll probably set the Apache up just because it seems to be fairly simple.. But still not sure if it's even needed.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Actually, you do care about ports. Put simply, you can't run two services listening on one port. You can't have Jira and Confluence listening on port 80 because only one of them can use the port at a time.

The most simple thing to do is have Apache listen on port 80, and tell it to proxy certain urls to Jira and Confluence (with their different ports). A common setup is to run Jira on port 8080, Confluence on 8090, and then have Apache say "when user asks for /jira over port 80, serve up what I find on port 8080, and if they ask for /confluence, serve up what I find on 8090"

Most importantly - if you've installed the apps seperately, you can stop one without touching the other, and vice-versa. Apache will chuck errors if a user tries to reach the stopped one, but it won't affect thr other

[chris hoerske]

I have two seperate installs on CentOS. One for JIRA and one for Confluence. Each are running on seperate ports. I'm currently able to restart either of them without affecting each other. I'm doing what you metioned above. Jira is on port 8080 and Confluence is on 8090. So, where am I having a problem? I have my primary web server (different server) with virtual directories. /Confluece goes to my confluence port and URL and /JIRA goes to it's url and port. Even if I didn't have this other webserver with the virtual diretories since my installs are seperate I don't see a must to proxy HTTP TCP/80 on Apache. So, since my apps are seperate aren't I good? I must be missing something..

[Norman Abramovitz]

If you actually took Nic's first paragraph to heart, you cannot have processes sharing the same ip/port address. If I understand correctly, you have jira on tomcat port 8080 and confluence on port 8090. You are also redirecting port 80 by using virtual directories. This means port 80 ip/port address is already in use. So your other webserver cannot use port 80 if the ip address is the same.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Exactly. A port can only have ONE application listening. So you Apache on port 80, and get it to proxy through to Jira/Confluence on their ports as required.

[ryan goodwin]

You said it yourself:

I have my primary web server (different server) with virtual directories

You've already got a proxy directing traffic back to the separate applications. Each application runs inside it's own tomcat instance on it's own ports - so they can run fine on the same machine as you have already discovered. Depending on how you want to access them determines whether or not you need apache or any other kind of proxying.

[chris hoerske]

Ryan,

Another question.. What is I installed a few more JIRA's and Confluences on the same server. These being stand alone installs.. I don't care about the proxy aspect due to my external virtual directories.. As long as they use different ports and I have enough server resources I should be good, correct? Or.. Should I just spin up dedicated VMs for each company?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Yes, you'll be fine as long as they're listening to different ports and have enough resources.

The decision about dedicated VMs is more of a system isolation and provisioning one. If you run everything on one single server, you could be vulnerable to the systems interfering with each other if things go wrong (e.g. if one of the Jiras falls over and chews up lots of CPU time, then that could affect the performance of the others). VMs isolate you from that sort of problem. There are other things like snapshots and moving VMs around that may be of benefit to you.