JIRA Requirements

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.

JIRA Client/Server Software Requirements

Please read the Supported Platforms page for JIRA, which lists the required server and client software supported by JIRA 4.4.x, including:

• Browsers (client-side)
• Java platforms (JDK/JRE) (server-side)
• Operating systems (server-side)
• Application servers (if you are installing JIRA WAR) (server-side)
• Databases (server-side)

Please also read the information below regarding server and client software requirements for JIRA.

1. Browser

If you have disabled JavaScript in your browser or are using a script blocking tool like NoScript, you must enable your browser to execute JavaScript from JIRA to access JIRA's full functionality.

2. Java

JIRA requires a Java Developers Kit (JDK) or Java Runtime Environment (JRE) platform to be installed on your server's operating system.

If you intend to use the Windows Installer or Linux Installer to install JIRA, there is no need to install and configure a separate JDK/JRE since these executable files will install and configure their own JRE to run JIRA.

If, however, you intend to install JIRA from an archive or you plan to install the JIRA WAR distribution, then you will first need to install a supported Java platform. (Refer to Supported Platforms for supported Java Platforms). For instructions on how to install a supported Java platform for JIRA, please refer to Installing Java.

Please Note:

• Currently, Oracle JDK/JRE (formerly Sun JDK/JRE) is available for Windows (32-bit + 64-bit), Linux (32-bit + 64-bit) and Solaris Platforms (32-bit + 64-bit).
  Mac OS X systems are packaged with a JDK optimised for their hardware and operating systems. However, these JDKs are not supported by JIRA.
• A JIRA installation running on a 64-bit Java platform may require additional memory (to run at a similar level of performance) to a JIRA installation running on a 32-bit Java platform.
  This is because a 64-bit Java platform's object references are twice the size as those for a 32-bit Java platform.

3. Application Server

JIRA is a web application that requires an application server.

• JIRA Standalone ships pre-configured with Apache Tomcat, which is a stable, lightweight and fast-performing application server. (There is no need to install a separate application server if you download the JIRA Standalone distribution.)
• JIRA WAR can be installed into an application server (supported by Atlassian), provided this application server is compatible with your operating system and JDK. You must manually configure your JIRA WAR installation to operate with an existing application server installation.

4. Database

JIRA requires a relational database to store its issue data. JIRA supports most popular relational database servers, so we suggest using the one that you are most comfortable with administering.

• JIRA Standalone ships pre-configured with the HSQLDB database, which is suitable for evaluation purposes only. HSQLDB is prone to database corruption. Before deploying JIRA to a production environment, we strongly recommend that you connect JIRA Standalone to an enterprise database (supported by Atlassian).
• JIRA WAR can be connected to an enterprise database (supported by Atlassian).

JIRA Server Hardware Recommendations

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 300MB – 1GB (of Java heap size) is enough for most evaluation purposes.

Most people start by installing JIRA Standalone on their local computer and migrate this 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.

• If you are planning to have a small number of projects (10-20) with 1,000 to 5,000 issues in total and about 100-200 users, a recent server (2.0+ GHz quad core CPU) with 1-2 GB of available RAM should cater for your needs.
• If you are planning for a greater number of issues and users, adding more memory will help. We have reports that allocating 1GB of RAM to JIRA is sufficient for 100,000 issues. If in doubt, allocate more memory than you think you need.
• If your system will experience a large number of concurrent requests, running JIRA on a multi-CPU machine will increase the concurrency of processing the requests, and therefore speed up the response time.

For reference, our http://jira.atlassian.com site has over 70,000 issues and over 30,000 user accounts. The system runs on a server with a 64-bit quad core processor and 32 GB of memory, of which only 1.5 GB is allocated 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.

As your JIRA system evolves, you may need to eventually increase JIRA's memory to maintain performance. Factors that will affect JIRA's memory requirements include an increase in the following:

• the number of users concurrently on the system
• the number of concurrent operations
• the number of plugins (some of which may have their own memory requirements)
• the number of workflow step executions (such as Transitions and Post Functions)
• the number of jobs and schedule services
• the volume of email notifications

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.

Please Note: JIRA requires access to a local disk for certain functionality. If JIRA does not have read and write access to disk, searching and saving/accessing 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.

Next Steps

Install JIRA Standalone (recommended); or Install JIRA WAR.