Explanation

Although we cannot directly recommend specific Anti-Virus software to use with JIRA applications we would like to advise our customers that if you are experiencing slowness with your JIRA application, try running it with virus checking disabled. As JIRA applications create many temporary files it is possible that due to disk I/O and resourcing, virus checking software can slow JIRA applications dramatically.

Most anti-virus software causes a dramatic increase in disk IO and CPU usage when used with JIRA applications. McAfee's NetShield 4.5 in particular claims to let you exclude folders from scanning, though in previous investigations we have found this not to be the case - upgrade to version 7.0.0 to fix this.

McAfee Agent 5.x has also been demonstrated to have a decremental effect on particularly search index performance due the overhead added to open/close file operations even on directories explicitly excluded from scanning. 

Symantec Anti-Virus should be uninstalled, as our experiences with it have shown it to cause dramatic performance degradation even when the service is turned off.

Workaround

Depending on the antivirus software, it may be possible to exclude certain files from scanning.

• Exclude <JIRA_Home> and <JIRA_Install> from antivirus scanning
• As noted above, Symantec Anti-Virus should be uninstalled
• If using McAfee Antivirus, ensure that the Jira's Java/Tomcat process is specified as a low-risk process in McAfee's On-Access scanner settings as recommended in Slow performance with Java-based applications when Endpoint Security or VirusScan Enterprise is installed
  Jira's process name should be:

  • • <JIRA_Install>\bin\tomcat8.exe.64 if configured as a service

    • <JIRA_Install>\jre\bin\java.exe if started manually, with start-jira.bat
       Note that the java.exe path could change if another version is installed. If using the start-jira.bat script to start Jira, please double-check the path.

Some Antivirus software may continue to impact JIRA applications even if these folders are excluded. If slowness is experienced, try running JIRA applications with virus checking disabled.