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For long-term use, we recommend that you configure Confluence to start automatically when the operating system restarts. For Windows servers, this means configuring Confluence to run as a Windows service.

There are two ways to install Confluence as a service: via the Confluence installer or manually as described below.

On this page:

Reasons for Starting Confluence as a Service

Installation as a Windows service offers these advantages:

Reduced risk of shutting down Confluence by accident. (If you start Confluence manually, a console window opens and there is a risk of someone accidentally shutting down Confluence by closing the window.)
Automated Confluence recovery after server restart
Improved troubleshooting through logging server output to file

You can read more about Windows services in the Microsoft Developer Network.

Using the Installer to Install Confluence as a Service

If you use the automated Confluence Installer to install Confluence on Windows, you will be prompted to choose to install Confluence as a Windows service. For more information about the automated Confluence Installer, please refer to Installing Confluence Standalone.

Manually Installing Confluence Standalone as a Service

From your Windows-based server:

Open a command prompt in the <CONFLUENCE-INSTALL>/bin directory.
Confirm that the JAVA_HOME variable is set to the JDK base directory with the command:
echo %JAVA_HOME%
Note that any directory in the path with spaces (eg. C:\Program Files must be converted to its eight-character equivalent (e.g. C:\Progra~1).
If you are installing Confluence on a Windows 2008 server, be sure to run the command prompt using 'run as administrator'. (Otherwise running 'service.bat', as described in the next step, will fail.)
Use the following command to install the service with default settings:
service.bat install Confluence
Now, to have the service start automatically when the server starts, run:
tomcat5 //US//Confluence --Startup auto
If you have a less than a 512 megabytes of memory, skip this step. For users with large Confluence installations, you can increase the maximum memory Confluence can use. (The default is 256MB). For example, you can set the maximum memory to 512 megs using:
tomcat5 //US//Confluence --JvmMx 512
If you do not have any JVM parameters you pass to your standalone version of Confluence, you can skip this step. If you do, add them to the service using:
tomcat5 //US//Confluence ++JvmOptions="-Djust.an.example=True"
For further configuration options, please refer to the Tomcat Windows Service How-To guide
Go to your Windows Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services -> Apache Tomcat Confluence and right-click on Properties to verify the settings are correct.
If you wish to run the service as a non-administrator user for security, or if you are using network drives for backups, attachments or indexes, you can run the service as another user. To change users, open the Apache Tomcat Confluence properties, go to the 'Log On' tab and enter the required username and password. Go to your Windows Control Panel -> User Accounts and confirm that the user has write permissions for the %CATALINA_HOME%, index and database directories. Note that any network drives must be specified by UNC and not letter mappings (eg. \\backupserver\confluence not z:\confluence)

Confluence is now be installed as a service, but will not automatically start up until the next server reboot
Start the Confluence service with the command:
net start Confluence

Managing Confluence as a Service

You can manage the Confluence service from the command prompt.

Stop Confluence with:
net stop Confluence
Uninstall the Confluence service with:
service.bat remove Confluence

Troubleshooting Confluence while Running as a Service

When investigating memory issues or bugs, it may be useful to view information from Confluence's garbage collection. To turn on the verbose garbage collection, use the command:
tomcat5 //US//Confluence ++JvmOptions="-Xloggc:<CONFLUENCE-INSTALL>\logs\atlassian-gc.log"
Starting the service produces an error similar to Failed creating java C:\jdk1.6.0_10\jre\bin\server\jvm.dll. This is because Tomcat is looking for a DLL msvcr71.dll. Please refer to this Knowledge Base article.
Unable to start Confluence as service after Allocating higher JVM Memory. Please refer to this Knowledge Base article.
Confluence 2.9 Installer does not work when installed as service, due to missing semi-colon in service.bat. Please refer to reported issue CONF-12785.

Upgrading Confluence