Installing Confluence Data Center
In this guide we'll run you through installing Confluence Data Center, which is a clustered solution, in a Windows or Linux Environment.
This guide covers installing for the first time, with no existing data. If you already have a Confluence Server instance, see Moving to Confluence Data Center.
Other ways to install Confluence Data Center:
- AWS Quick Start - hassle free deployment in AWS
- Move to Data Center - for existing Confluence Server sites
Interested in learning more about Data Center? Find out more about the benefits of Confluence Data Center.
On this page:
Before you begin
Clustering requirements
To run Confluence in a cluster you must:
- Have a Data Center license (you can purchase a Data Center license or create an evaluation license at my.atlassian.com)
- Use a supported external database, operating system and Java version
- Use a load balancer with session affinity and WebSockets support in front of the Confluence cluster
- Have a shared directory accessible to all cluster nodes in the same path (this will be your shared home directory)
- Use OAuth authentication if you have application links to other Atlassian products (such as Jira)
Supported platforms
See our Supported Platforms page for information on the database, Java, and operating systems you'll be able to use. These requirements are the same for Server and Data Center deployments. See Confluence Data Center Technical Overview for important hardware and infrastructure considerations.
We also have specific guides and deployment templates to help you running Confluence Data Center in AWS or Azure. Check them out to find out what's required.
Terminology
In this guide we'll use the following terminology:
- Installation directory – The directory where you installed Confluence on a node.
- Local home directory – The home or data directory on each node (in non-clustered Confluence this is simply known as the home directory).
- Shared home directory – The directory you created that is accessible to all nodes in the cluster via the same path.
- Synchrony home directory - The directory where you configure and run Synchrony from (this may be on a confluence node, or on its own node)
At the end of the installation process, you'll have an installation and local home directory on each node, and a single shared home directory (a total of 5 directories in a two node cluster) for Confluence plus directories for Synchrony.
There’s a known issue during setup where a load balancer (or proxy) pings the server and breaks Confluence installation or migration to Data Center. See
CONFSERVER-61189
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Getting issue details...
STATUS
During installation, you need to disable load balancer health checks and make sure you don’t open multiple tabs that point to the same Confluence URL.
Install and set up Confluence
1. Install Confluence on the first node
- Install Confluence on node 1
See Installing Confluence on Windows from Zip File or Installing Confluence on Linux from Archive File for more information. - Start Confluence on Node 1
- The setup wizard will prompt you to complete the migration, by entering:
- A name for your cluster
- The path to the shared home directory you created earlier
- The network interface Confluence will use to communicate between nodes
- A multicast address (automatically generated or enter your own) or the IP addresses of each cluster node
How you want Confluence to discover cluster nodes:
- Multicast - enter your own multicast address or automatically generate one.
- TCP/IP - enter the IP address of each cluster node
AWS - enter your IAM Role or secret key, and region.
Stop Confluence on Node 1
Add more Confluence nodes
2. Copy Confluence to second node
To copy Confluence to the second node:
- Shut down Confluence on node 1
- Shut down your application server on node 2, or stop it automatically loading web applications
- Copy the installation directory from node 1 to node 2
- Copy the local home directory from node 1 to node 2
If the file path of the local home directory is not the same on nodes 1 and 2 you'll need to update the<installation directory>/confluence/WEB-INF/classes/confluence-init.propertiesfile on node 2 to point to the correct location.
Copying the local home directory ensures the Confluence search index, the database and cluster configuration, and any other settings are copied to node 2.
3. Configure load balancer
Configure your load balancer for Confluence. You can use the load balancer of your choice, but it needs to support session affinity and WebSockets.
You can verify that your load balancer is sending requests correctly to your existing Confluence server by accessing Confluence through the load balancer and creating a page, then checking that this page can be viewed/edited by another machine through the load balancer.
4. Start Confluence one node at a time
You must only start Confluence one node at a time. The first node must be up and available before starting the next one.
- Start Confluence on node 1
- Wait for Confluence to become available on node 1
- Start Confluence on node 2
- Wait for Confluence to become available on node 2.
The Cluster monitoring console (
> General Configuration > Clustering) shows information about the active cluster.
When the cluster is running properly, this page displays the details of each node, including system usage and uptime. Use the 
menu to see more information about each node in the cluster.
5. Test your Confluence cluster
Remember, to test creating content you'll need to access Confluence via your load balancer. You can't create or edit pages when accessing a node directly.
A simple process to ensure your cluster is working correctly is:
- Access a node via your load balancer, and create a new document on this node
- Ensure the new document is visible by accessing it directly on a different node
- Search for the new document on the original node, and ensure it appears
- Search for the new document on another node, and ensure it appears
If Confluence detects more than one instance accessing the database, but not in a working cluster, it will shut itself down in a cluster panic. This can be fixed by troubleshooting the network connectivity of the cluster.
6. Set up your Synchrony cluster (optional)
Synchrony is required for collaborative editing. You have two options for running Synchrony with a Data Center license:
- managed by Confluence (recommended)
This is the default setup. Confluence will automatically launch a Synchrony process on the same node, and manage it for you. No manual steps are required. - Standalone Synchrony cluster (managed by you)
You deploy and manage Synchrony standalone in its own cluster with as many nodes as you need. Significant setup is required. See Set up a Synchrony cluster for Confluence Data Center for a step-by-step guide.
Head to Administering Collaborative Editing to find out more about collaborative editing.
Security
Ensure that only permitted cluster nodes are allowed to connect to a Confluence Data Center instance's Hazelcast port (which defaults to 5801) or Synchrony's Hazelcast port (which defaults to 5701) through the use of a firewall and or network segregation.
Troubleshooting
If you have problems with the above procedure, please see our Cluster Troubleshooting guide.
If you're testing Confluence Data Center by running the cluster on a single machine, please refer to our developer instructions on Starting a Confluence cluster on a single machine.
Upgrading a cluster
It's important that upgrades follow the procedure for Upgrading Confluence Data Center.