Adding and removing Data Center nodes

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You can add and remove nodes from your Data Center cluster at any time. You don’t have to worry about extra nodes affecting your license, because it’s based on the number of users in the cluster, rather the number of nodes.

Adding a node

To add a node:

  1. Stop one of your nodes.
  2. Copy the installation directory and local home directory from the stopped node to your new node.
  3. Edit the cluster.properties file in the local home directory and change jira.node.id to a new, unique identified.
  4. Start Jira on your new node. During the startup process, Jira will recover indexes from a running node to bring the new node up to date.
  5. In the upper-right corner of the screen, select Administration  > System.
  6. Under System support (the left-side panel), select Clustering and check that the new node is visible.

The synchronous node start-up is now enforced by the application. See Changes to index management on the Jira startup in version 9.1 for details.

To learn more about the upcoming changes to index management in Jira, check out the Data Center Roadmap.

Removing a node

To remove a node, stop Jira on that node.  You can then remove the installation and local home directory as required. 

To see the number of nodes remaining:

  1. In the upper-right corner of the screen, select Administration  > System.
  2. Under System support (the left-side panel), select Clustering and check the number of nodes.

Scaling up and down in and Azure

If you deployed Jira Data Center on or Azure, your Jira nodes will be in scaling groups. You will add and remove nodes either by changing the minimum and maximum size of each group or using a scaling plan. See the following resources for more info:

Moving to non-clustered Data Center

If you no longer need clustering, but still want access to Data Center features, you can go back to a non-clustered (single node) Data Center installation. In these instructions we'll assume that you'll use one of your existing cluster nodes as your new installation. You'll also need to make some infrastructure changes as part of the switch.

What about the features?

After moving to a non-clustered (single node) Data Center deployment, you will lose capabilities that are based on clustering, such as zero-downtime upgrades, instant scalability, and performance and scale. For the complete list of features, see Server and Data Center feature comparison.

Before you begin

We recommend completing this process in a staging environment, and running a set of functional tests, integration tests, and performance tests, before making these changes in production.

1. Shut down Jira

Stop all cluster nodes before you proceed.

2. Configure your load balancer

Configure your load balancer to redirect traffic away from all Jira nodes, except the node you plan to use for your standalone installation.

If you no longer need your load balancer, you can remove it at this step.

3. Move items in the cluster shared home back to local home

Move the contents of your <shared home> directory to the root of your <local home> directory. Make sure your attachments directory is moved as part of this step.

Your cluster's shared home directory should now be empty.

4. Delete the cluster.properties file

Delete the cluster.properties file that you created when setting up your cluster. The file is in the local home directory.

5. Start Jira

Restart Jira.

tip/resting Created with Sketch.

To confirm you're now running a non-clustered installation, go to AdministrationSystem > Clustering. The active cluster should no longer appear. Instead, you'll see some general information about clustering in Jira Data Center.

Last modified on Oct 25, 2023

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