Preventing users from accessing JIRA during backups

For medium to large databases, backing up JIRA data can take a long time, during which it's possible for users and JIRA services to alter the database, possibly resulting in inconsistent data in your backup.

For automated daily backups, there is no solution to this, and it's a good reason to prefer native database backup utilities, as the documentation suggests.

When exporting an XML backup (e.g. for upgrading), follow one of these methods to prevent users from accessing JIRA:

• Recommended method:
  • If you have an Apache or other web/proxy server sitting in front of JIRA, then you can stop Apache from proxying to JIRA, and serve a static HTML page with a nice message along the lines of "JIRA is undergoing maintenance". Note:
    • The administrator has to be able to access JIRA directly (not through Apache) so that they can do the XML backup.
    • This method does not require JIRA to be restarted.

• Alternative method:
  1. Shut down JIRA, configure it to listen on a different port and restart. For JIRA Standalone, you would do this by editing the server.xml file. Change the following section:

           <Connector port="8080"
                 maxHttpHeaderSize="8192" maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25" maxSpareThreads="75" useBodyEncodingForURI="true"
                 enableLookups="false" redirectPort="8443" acceptCount="100" connectionTimeout="20000" disableUploadTimeout="true" />
     

     • Note: If you have enabled HTTPS, then you would need to edit the HTTPS Connector section as well.
  2. Restart JIRA and do the XML backup.
  3. Shut down JIRA, change all the settings back, then re-start JIRA.

• Alternative method:
  • If you have a firewall in front of JIRA, you could stop requests from getting through or change the port number that it uses. Note:
    • The admin will need to log into JIRA on the temporary port number, or get to it from behind the firewall, so that they can do the XML backup.
    • This method does not require JIRA to be restarted.