This page provides pointers for things to look at when running Confluence on virtualised hardware. Summary Running Confluence in a virtual machine (VM) requires specialised skills to set up and manage the virtualised environment. In particular, the performance of Confluence can be affected by the activity of other VMs running on the same infrastructure, as well as how you configure the Confluence VM itself. Atlassian supports Confluence sites running on a virtualised environment, but we can only offer support for problems which are unrelated to the environment itself. You will need to understand and be prepared to manage your own virtualised environment if you wish to run Confluence on such a platform. On this page: Related pages: Server Hardware Requirements Guide Operating Large or Mission-Critical Confluence Installations Confluence Installation Guide

Recommendations

The following recommendations come from our experience in running and testing Confluence in virtualised environments like VMWare and KVM, and our experience in working with customers running on these platforms.

• Know your platform. Consult the documentation for your operating system and your chosen virtualisation technology, for details on setting up a reliable VM (virtual machine) image.
• Allocate enough memory. As a Java web application, Confluence requires a relatively large memory allocation, compared to some other web technologies. Ensure that your VM images have enough physical memory allocated to run Confluence without swapping.
• Handle high I/O. Under normal usage, Confluence requires a significant number of input/output (I/O) operations to the database and home directory for each web request. Ensure that you use the correct drivers and consider how you make storage available to your VMs to optimise this access.
• Handle peak CPU and memory usage. For certain operations (including PDF export, Office document processing, and displaying large pages) Confluence requires a significant amount of CPU and memory. Ensure that your virtualisation infrastructure has the flexibility and capacity to deal with peak load, not just idle load.
• Synchronise time correctly. Some customers have had problems with time synchronisation between the VM and the host system. This causes problems in Confluence due to irregularities in the execution of scheduled tasks. We strongly recommend checking your VM time sync if you have issues with scheduled tasks in a virtualised environment.

Further help

For further assistance in setting up a virtualised environment for running Confluence, you may want to consult an Atlassian Expert. Several experts have experience with installation and performance tuning, and can help you with your Confluence configuration.