Common causes for Jira Server crashes and performance issues

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Expand the titles below to see the common causes for performance issues:

I have a large JIRA instance

When some JIRA application administrators think about large JIRA application instances, they often focus on the number of issues a single instance can hold. Yet there are so many other elements that can affect the scale of a JIRA application instance. This document explains how JIRA applications perform in different configurations and provides a guide of how to scale JIRA applications in a large enterprise: Jira Enterprise Sizing Guide.

Java Seg Faults

If Java itself can crash, either due to a bug in JIRA or the JDK. See Java Crashes.

Out of Memory: Permgen space

Search the atlassian-jira.log file for the text java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: PermGen space. You can solve this problem by increasing your PermGen space to 256M. Make sure to specify PermGen space as opposed to heap space. PermGen space is a straight-forward increase of the memory setting.

Out of Memory: Heap space

Unlike PermGen space, Heap space memory may indicate a memory leak and can require more troubleshooting than just increasing the amount. Managing memory settings requires some analysis; there is no appropriate universal recommendation. See JIRA Crashes Due to 'OutOfMemoryError Java heap space' to eliminate memory leak possibilities from our most likely sources. Once you've done that, learn how to increase JIRA application memory.

Remote API

Remote API scripts can render JIRA applications inoperable. If you've recently added a script, remove it for troubleshooting purposes or disable the Remote API.

Databases: HSQLDB

The in-memory database HSQLDB is for evaluation purposes only. Make sure to switch databases when moving into production.

Anti-Virus

If you are experiencing slowness with JIRA applications, try running JIRA applications with virus checking configured not to scan your application installations or home directories.

Network shares

JIRA applications need fast access to the local filesystem. If you are hosting JIRA applications, or their index directory, on a network share (SMB, NFS etc), this can cause a large loss in performance. Run JIRA applications with fast local disk access. See Testing Disk Access Speed.

SSL or HTTPS

Although some organisations have a requirement to run JIRA applications over SSL or HTTPS, please note that this can affect performance.

JDBC drivers

Different JDBC drivers have different performance characteristics. Ensure that you are using the latest patched version of the JDBC drivers for your database.

Network latency

The latency between the database server and the server hosting JIRA can be a source of performance problems. If the database is hosted on a different machine from your JIRA applications, please check the ping times between the servers. See also Test database performance for Jira Server; Using the JIRA Configuration Tool; Monitoring Database Connection Usage.

XML Backups

In large instances, the XML backup can be inefficient. Move to the native database tools for an efficient and reliable backup solution.

Third party apps & stuck threads

At times Jira's performance may slowly deteriorate and may appear as unresponsive due to stuck threads & thread pool exhaustion caused by third party apps. Refer to this KB for further details: Jira is unresponsive either consistently or randomly due to stuck threads and / or thread pool exhaustion

Upgrade Java Version

Please only use the supported Java version for your JIRA application version.

Deploying Multiple Atlassian Applications in a Single Tomcat Container
Deploying multiple Atlassian applications in a single Tomcat container is not supported. We do not test this configuration and upgrading any of the applications (even for point releases) is likely to break it. There are also a number of known issues with this configuration (see this FAQ for more information).

We also strongly recommend not deploying multiple Atlassian applications to a single Tomcat container for a number of practical reasons. Firstly, you must shut down Tomcat to upgrade any application and secondly, if one application crashes, the other applications running in that Tomcat container will be inaccessible.

Finally, we recommend not deploying any other applications to the same Tomcat container that runs JIRA, especially if these other applications have large memory requirements or require additional libraries in Tomcat's lib subdirectory.

Instance integrated with Apache

If you have a reverse proxy or firewall on your side, i.e. if your instance is integrated with Apache, then you would need to set the gzip compression to 'off' from JIRA -> 'Administration' -> 'Global Settings' -> 'General configuration' as that can cause performance issues.

To examine logs, please see Useful log files in Jira.

Knowledge Base Articles

Check known performance issues from our Knowledge Base

Last modified on Feb 16, 2023

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