Documentation for JIRA 4.0. Documentation for other versions of JIRA is available too.
JIRA is a 'web application', meaning it runs centrally on a server, and users interact with it through web browsers from any computer.
If you are considering running JIRA on VMware, please read the Running JIRA in a Virtualised Environment.
Please read the Supported Platforms page for JIRA. The JIRA Supported Platforms page contains important information on the client/server software supported for JIRA 4.0.x, including:
Please also read the information below regarding client/server software for JIRA.
If you have disabled Javascript in your browser or are using a script blocker like NoScript, you will need to enable Javascript for JIRA to get the full experience JIRA has to offer.
JIRA requires a Java Developers Kit (JDK) to be installed on the server (see Supported Platforms for supported JDK versions). For instructions on how to do this, please refer to Installing Java.
Currently Sun's JDK is available for Windows (32 bit + 64 bit), Solaris (SPARC + 32 bit + 64 bit) and Linux Platforms (32 bit + 64 bit). If you are a Mac OSX user, Apple also provides a specific JDK that has been optimised for its hardware and OS.
JIRA is a web application, so requires an application server.
JIRA requires a relational database for storage of issue data. JIRA supports most relational database servers, so we suggest using the one that you are most comfortable administering.
During evaluation, JIRA will run well on any reasonably fast workstation computer (e.g. 1.5+ Ghz processor). Memory requirements depend on how many projects and issues you will store, but 256MB is enough for most evaluation purposes. (Note: most people start by installing JIRA Standalone on their local computer. It is easy to move JIRA to a production server later).
The hardware required to run JIRA in production depends mainly on the number of issues and users that your installation will have, as well as the maximum number of concurrent requests that the system will experience during peak hours.
For reference, jira.atlassian.com has over 33,000 issues and over 30,000 user accounts. The system runs on a 64bit Quad processor. The server has 4 GB of memory with 1 GB dedicated to JIRA.
Please note that performance heavily depends on your usage pattern. As a general rule, if you wish to store more than 200,000 issues in JIRA we recommend that you set up separate instances of JIRA on different physical machines and split your projects and issues between the instances. You can follow the instructions on splitting a JIRA instance, if you need to convert an existing JIRA instance into multiple instances.
We would appreciate it if you let us know what hardware configuration works for you. Please create a ticket in our support system with your hardware specification and mention the number of users and issues in your JIRA installation.
JIRA requires access to a local disk for certain functionality (e.g. if JIRA does not have read and write access to disk, searching and attachments will not work).
While some of our customers run JIRA on SPARC-based hardware, Atlassian only officially supports JIRA running on x86 hardware and 64-bit derivatives of x86 hardware.
Install JIRA Standalone (recommended); or Install JIRA WAR/EAR.