This document provides information on configuring an external database.

The Embedded Database for Evaluation Purposes

The Confluence installation includes an embedded HSQLDB database, supplied for the purpose of evaluating Confluence.

If you are using the embedded database, the database files are stored in the \database folder under your Confluence Home directory. See also Important Directories and Files.

Embedded Database is Not Suitable for Production Instances of Confluence

Production instances of Confluence should use an external database. When using the default HSQLDB database, you run the risk of unrecoverable data loss due to not being transaction safe.

  • Corruption is occasionally encountered after sudden power loss and can usually be corrected using this data recovery procedure.
  • HSQLDB is still suitable for evaluation purposes, but the risk can only be eliminated by switching databases. External databases may also provide superior speed and scalability.

Selecting an External Database

The XML backup built into Confluence is not well suited for database migration for large data sets (see Production Backup Strategy for reference). Choose your database wisely; if you need to migrate later, Atlassian support will refer you to a third party database migration tool. Vote for CONF-12599 to add a more robust strategy for large implementation migrations.

Below is more information on selecting and migrating to an external database:

Database Setup

Setup instructions are shown below.

Optimising Database Performance

To improve database responsiveness:

Database Troubleshooting

For solving database-related problems:

Obtain technical support from Troubleshooting Problems and Requesting Technical Support.

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