Confluence 6.4 Upgrade Notes

Here are some important notes on upgrading to Confluence 6.4. For details of the new features and improvements in this release, see the Confluence 6.4 Release Notes.

Upgrade notes

Confluence 6 is a major upgrade

If you're upgrading from Confluence 5.x, be sure to read these upgrade notes thoroughly, take a full backup, and test your upgrade in a non-production environment before upgrading your production site.

Post-upgrade task

A post-upgrade task will index all existing drafts and pages with unpublished changes. It runs immediately after the upgrade completes, and may take some time in sites with a lot of unpublished content. Confluence will be up and usable while the task runs.

Only draft pages or unpublished changes created after the upgrade will be marked with a lozenge or appear in Recently worked on. Draft pages created prior to upgrading will only be accessible under Drafts in the creator's profile.

SQL Server driver update

We are replacing the open source jTDS driver for Microsoft SQL Server with the official Microsoft JDBC Driver for SQL Server. From Confluence 6.4, all new installations will use the Microsoft JDBC Driver for SQL Server.

If you're upgrading to Confluence 6.4 you don't need to do anything right now - you'll continue to use the bundled jTDS driver. We'll help you migrate to the Microsoft driver in an upcoming release

If you have an existing Confluence installation and need to set up a test environment that replicates your production environment (including the jTDS driver), you can do this by selecting Unsupported Database in the database selection screen and then specifying the jTDS driver as follows:

  • Driver class namenet.sourceforge.jtds.jdbc.Driver
  • Database URL (example): jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://<host>:1433/<database-name>
  • Hibernate dialect: com.atlassian.confluence.impl.hibernate.dialect.SQLServerDialect

Changes to the setup wizard

We've made a few small changes to the setup wizard to make connecting to an external database easier, including a way to test the database connection during setup. This is the first in a series of changes we have planned to help get new installations up and running with the right database configuration. 

Simpler command to start Synchrony (Data Center only)

We've reduced the number of properties you need to provide to run Synchrony in Data Center by using some sensible default values. You can still override these defaults, see Configuring Synchrony for more information on the required and optional properties.

Start Synchrony command...
java 
-Xss2048k 
-Xmx2g
 
# To set the classpath in Linux 
-classpath <PATH_TO_SYNCHRONY_STANDALONE_JAR>:<JDBC_DRIVER_PATH> 
 
# To set the classpath in Windows 
-classpath <PATH_TO_SYNCHRONY_STANDALONE_JAR>;<JDBC_DRIVER_PATH> 
 
# Remove this section if you don't want to discover nodes using TCP/IP
-Dcluster.join.type=tcpip 
-Dcluster.join.tcpip.members=<TCPIP_MEMBERS> 
 
# Remove this section if you don't want to discover nodes using multicast
-Dcluster.join.type=multicast
 
-Dsynchrony.bind=<SERVER_IP> 
-Dsynchrony.service.url=<SYNCHRONY_URL> 
-Dsynchrony.database.url=<YOUR_DATABASE_URL> 
-Dsynchrony.database.username=<DB_USERNAME> 
-Dsynchrony.database.password=<DB_PASSWORD> 
 
synchrony.core 
sql

Update configuration files after upgrading

The contents of configuration files, such as server.xmlsetenv.bat / setenv.sh and confluenceinit.properties change from time to time. 

When upgrading, we recommend manually reapplying any additions to these files (such as proxy configuration, datasource, JVM parameters etc) rather than simply overwriting the file with the file from your previous installation, otherwise you will miss out on any improvements we have made.

Upgrading from Confluence 5.x?

Collaborative editing is made possible by the magic of Synchrony. When you install Confluence Server, Synchrony will be configured to run as a separate process on your server.

If you're upgrading from Confluence 5.x, there are a few requirements you need to be aware of:

  • Memory and CPU: You may need to give your server more resources than for previous Confluence releases. When you install Confluence, Synchrony (which is required for collaborative editing), will be configured to run as a separate process on your server. The default maximum heap size for Synchrony is 1 GB (on top of Confluence's requirements). 
  • WebSockets: Collaborative editing works best with WebSockets. Your firewall / proxy should allow WebSocket connections. 
  • SSL termination: SSL should be terminated at your load balancer, proxy server, or gateway as Synchrony does not support direct HTTPS connections. 
  • Database drivers: You must use a supported database driver. Collaborative editing will fail with an error if you're using an unsupported or custom JDBC driver (or driverClassName in the case of a JNDI datasource connection). See Database JDBC Drivers for the list of drivers we support.
  • Database connection pool: your database must allow enough connections to support both Confluence and Synchrony (which defaults to a maximum pool size of 15). 


Infrastructure changes 

For developers

There were a few library upgrades in this release which may have an impact on add-ons. 

Head to Preparing for Confluence 6.4 to find out more about the changes.

End of support announcements

  • We are replacing the open source jTDS driver with the official Microsoft JDBC Driver for SQL Server. Confluence will end support for the jTDS driver in Confluence 6.6. See End of Support Announcements for Confluence for more information. 

Known issues

Upgrade procedure

Note: Upgrade to a test environment first. Test your upgrades in your test environment before rolling them into production.

If you're already running a version of Confluence, please follow these instructions to upgrade to the latest version:

  1. Go to > Support Tools > Health Check to check your license validity, application server, database setup and more.
  2. Before you upgrade, we strongly recommend that you back up your installation directory, home directory and database.
  3. If your version of Confluence is earlier than 6.3, read the release notes and upgrade guides for all releases between your version and the latest version.
  4. Download the latest version of Confluence.
  5. Follow the instructions in the Upgrade Guide.

Checking for known issues and troubleshooting the Confluence upgrade

After you have completed the steps required to upgrade your Confluence installation, check all the items on the Confluence post-upgrade checklist to ensure that everything works as expected. If something is not working correctly, please check for known Confluence issues and try troubleshooting your upgrade as described below:

  • Check for known issues. Sometimes we find out about a problem with the latest version of Confluence after we have released the software. In such cases we publish information about the known issues in the Confluence Knowledge Base.
  • Check for answers from the community. Other users may have encountered the same issue. You can check for answers from the community at Atlassian Answers.
  • Did you encounter a problem during the Confluence upgrade? Please refer to the guide to troubleshooting upgrades in the Confluence Knowledge Base.

If you encounter a problem during the upgrade and can't solve it, please create a support ticket and one of our support engineers will help you.

Last modified on Mar 25, 2019

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