Here are some important notes on upgrading to Confluence 7.12. For details of the new features and improvements in this release, see the Confluence 7.12 Release Notes. 

Upgrade notes 

Change to database validation query configuration

Confluence uses a database validation query to check that a database connection is alive before attempting to use it. There are several different ways to perform this validation query. From Confluence 7.12, we now let the database driver choose how to validate if a connection is still alive, rather than overriding the driver configuration with a particular validation query. This simplifies the configuration, and did show a small performance improvement in many of our tests. 

setenv file improvements

We've added some commentary to the setenv.sh and setenv.bat file to make it easier for you to locate and manage commonly modified Java options and system properties, and added some recommended values for large instances.  

As always, we strongly recommend checking that the default Java options haven't changed, before copying over your previous configuration. Here's a summary of the changes.

Removed

The following options were removed, as they are the default from Java 8 onwards, so don't need to be set explicitly.

-XX:+UseCodeCacheFlushing
-XX:-PrintGCDetails
-XX:-PrintTenuringDistribution
-XX:+PrintGCCause

We also removed the following properties, which means Confluence will fall back to the default for your Java version. See the note below about a known issue with TLS1.3 and some early Java 11 versions.  You can always reinstate these properties if you need to specify specific protocols. 

-Djdk.tls.server.protocols=TLSv1.1,TLSv1.2 
-Djdk.tls.client.protocols=TLSv1.1,TLSv1.2

Added

The following option was added, which changes the default behaviour of system.gc.

-XX:+ExplicitGCInvokesConcurrent

The following options are recommended for medium, large, and enterprise sized sites. These have been added as comments, and can be uncommented if you choose to adopt these recommended values. 

-XX:ReservedCodeCacheSize=384m 
-XX:+PrintTenuringDistribution 
-XX:+PrintGCDetails -XX:+PrintGCTimeStamps 
-Dconfluence.upgrade.recovery.file.enabled=false 

We have also updated the service.bat file to make it consistent with the values in setenv.bat. If you've modified this file previously, make sure you update the new file, rather than copying over your existing file. 

See How to migrate your setenv settings for Confluence 7.12 and later for a step-by-step guide to migrating your customizations over to the new file. 

PostgreSQL 11 support

We've added support for PostgreSQL 11. If you plan to upgrade, you should upgrade Confluence first, then upgrade your database.  

See pg-upgrade in the PostgreSQL 11 documentation for information on how to upgrade your database. Make sure you back up your database, Confluence installation directory and Confluence home directory before you begin. We strongly recommend you test your changes in a staging environment first. 

After upgrading, we recommend you run ANALYZE. Analyze collects statistics about the contents of tables in the database, which the query planner can use to help determine the most efficient execution plans for queries.

TLS1.3 known issue

There are some known issues with Java 11 and TLS 1.3, so if you're not using the bundled Java version, make sure you're running Java 11.0.8 or later to avoid problems.

Supported Platforms changes

In this release we added support for PostgreSQL 11. 

End of support announcements

Advance Notice: End of support for Microsoft Edge Legacy

In January 2020 Microsoft released a new Microsoft Edge browser based on Chromium. As Microsoft have announced plans to end support for Microsoft Edge Legacy, we have also decided to end support for Microsoft Edge Legacy.

Confluence 7.12.x is the last release to support Microsoft Edge Legacy. 

Advance Notice: End of support for PostgreSQL 9.6

Confluence 7.13.x will be the last release to support the following database:

• PostgreSQL 9.6

For more information on these notices, see End of Support Announcements for Confluence. 

Infrastructure changes 

Head to Preparing for Confluence 7.12 to find out more about changes under the hood. 

Known issues

• There is a known issue when running Confluence with MySQL 8.0.29 and later due to a change to the UTF8 alias in MySQL. We're working on a fix, but if you have Confluence 7.3 or later, you can change the character set and collation to UTF8MB4 to avoid this issue. See How to Fix the Collation and Character Set of a MySQL Database manually.
• There is a known issue where upgrading Confluence on Microsoft SQL Server fails with an 'invalid column name error. See CONFSERVER-66547 for a workaround. 
• There are a number of known issues when upgrading Confluence on specific database versions. See Confluence 7.11 upgrade notes if you are upgrading from Confluence 7.10 or earlier.

• There's a known issue running PostgreSQL on Azure with the bundled version of the driver (42.2.16). See CONFSERVER-60515 for a workaround

• If you are upgrading from Confluence 6.3 or earlier, there's a known issue where spaces do not appear in the space directory. You'll need to reindex your site after upgrading to fix this. 

• If you use Apache to limit who can access the admin console, you should update your configuration. See Using Apache to limit access to the Confluence administration interface for our suggested configuration.
• There is a known issue where read-only mode attempts to write to <shared-home>/confluence.cfg.xml , but the file doesn't exist in the shared home directory. This problem affects sites that have been previously upgraded from Confluence 6.0 or earlier. See Could not save access.mode into the shared confluence.cfg.xml file error after upgrading to Confluence Data Center 6.10
• There is a known issue where some fonts that Confluence relies on are not available in older Linux distributions. See Confluence UI shows garbled or corrupt text on CAPTCHA, macros and/or diagrams due to missing fonts

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.

Upgrade procedure

Always test the upgrade in a test environment before upgrading in production.

To upgrade Confluence to the latest version:

1. Go to Administration menu , then General Configuration > Plan your upgrade and select the version you want to upgrade to. This will run the pre-upgrade checks.
2. Go to Administration menu , then General Configuration > Troubleshooting and support tools to check your license validity, application server, database setup and more.
3. If your version of Confluence is more than one version behind, read the release notes and upgrade guides  for all releases between your version and the latest version.
4. Back up your installation directory, home directory and database.
5. Download the latest version of Confluence.
6. Follow the instructions in the Upgrade Guide.

Update configuration files after upgrading

The contents of configuration files such as server.xml, web.xml , setenv.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) rather than simply overwriting the file with the file from your previous installation, otherwise you will miss out on any improvements we have made.