Installing JIRA on Windows

This guide describes how to install a new JIRA installation on Windows using the automated 'Windows Installer'. If you are upgrading JIRA, please refer to the Upgrading JIRA guide.

You can also install JIRA from a 'zip' archive — see Installing JIRA from an Archive File on Windows, Linux or Solaris for details. This is useful if you want JIRA to use a pre-existing supported Java platform, since the Windows Installer installs its own JRE to run JIRA.

Please Note: Some anti-virus or other Internet security tools may interfere with the JIRA installation process and prevent the process from completing successfully. If you experience or anticipate experiencing such an issue with your anti-virus/Internet security tool, disable this tool first before proceeding with the JIRA installation.

There are two ways to install JIRA using the Windows Installer:

On this page:

Using the Installation Wizard

Use the installation wizard if you are installing JIRA on your server for the first time or you wish to specify your installation options.

If you have previously installed JIRA using the installation wizard and wish to re-install JIRA again with the same installation options, you can re-install JIRA in 'unattended mode' without any user input required (see below for details).

1. Download and Run the JIRA 'Windows Installer'

To install JIRA as a service, the Windows Installer must be run using a Windows administrator account. While you can run the Windows Installer with a non-administrator account, your installation options will be much more limited.

Download the JIRA 'Windows Installer' (.exe) file from the JIRA Download page.
Run the '.exe' file to start the installation wizard.
If a Windows 7 (or Vista) 'User Account Control' dialog box requests if you want to allow the installation wizard to make changes to your computer, specify 'Yes'. If you do not, the installation wizard will have restricted access to your operating system and any subsequent installation options will be limited.
At the 'Upgrading JIRA?' step, choose between the 'Express Install' or 'Custom Install' options:
- Express Install — If you choose this option, JIRA will be installed with default settings which are shown in the next step of the installation wizard. If you want to customise any of these options, click the 'Back' button and choose the 'Custom Install' option instead.
- Custom Install — If you choose this option, JIRA will prompt you to specify the following options (which are presented during subsequent steps of the installation wizard and pre-populated with default values):
- - The 'Destination Directory' in which to install JIRA.
  - The JIRA Home directory (which must be unique for each JIRA installation).
  - The Windows 'Start' menu folder options.
  - The TCP ports (i.e. an HTTP and a Control port) that JIRA will run through.
  - If you are running the installer using an administrator account, you will be prompted to 'Install JIRA as a service' (recommended). You can also do this manually later, as described in Running JIRA as a Service.
    If you installed JIRA as a service, you must start JIRA through the Windows 'Start' menu, since JIRA will not start if you run start-jira.bat at the Windows Command Prompt.
The installation wizard will install JIRA onto your operating system and will start JIRA automatically when the wizard finishes. JIRA will also be launched automatically in your browser window if you chose this option.

Please Note:

If you chose to install JIRA as a service, the JIRA service will be run as the Windows 'SYSTEM' user account. To change this user account, see Changing the Windows user that the JIRA service uses.
If you do not install JIRA as a service, then once started, JIRA will be run as the Windows user account under which JIRA was installed.
If you use JIRA running on a Windows Server in production, we strongly recommend creating a dedicated user account (e.g. with username 'jira') for running JIRA.
- For more information about creating a dedicated user account and defining which directories this account should have write access to, refer to our guidelines.
  If your Windows Server is operating under a Microsoft Active Directory, ask your Active Directory administrator to create a dedicated user account that you can use to run JIRA (with no prior privileges).
- If JIRA is installed as a service, do not forget to change the user account that runs the JIRA service to your dedicated user account for running JIRA.

2. Starting JIRA

If JIRA is not already started, you can start JIRA using the appropriate Windows 'Start' menu shortcut or command prompt option.

Once JIRA is started, you can access JIRA from the appropriate Windows 'Start' menu shortcut or a browser on any computer with network access to your JIRA server.

2.1 Windows 'Start' Menu Shortcuts

The Installer will have created the following Windows 'Start' menu shortcuts:

Access JIRA — opens a web browser window to access your JIRA application.
Your JIRA server must have been started for this shortcut to work.
Start JIRA Server — starts up the Apache Tomcat application server which runs your JIRA installation, so that you can access JIRA through your web browser.
Stop JIRA Server — stops the Apache Tomcat application server which runs your JIRA installation. You will not be able to access JIRA through your web browser after choosing this shortcut.
Uninstall JIRA — uninstalls JIRA from your Windows operating system.

2.2 Starting and Stopping JIRA from a Command Prompt

Enter the bin subdirectory of your JIRA installation directory and run the appropriate file:

start-jira.bat (to start JIRA)
stop-jira.bat (to stop JIRA)

If you followed our guidelines for running JIRA with a dedicated user account, then to run JIRA as this user account (e.g. 'jira'), use the runas command to execute start-jira.bat. For example:

> runas /env /user:<DOMAIN>\jira start-jira.bat
(where <DOMAIN> is your Windows domain or computer name.)

2.3 Accessing JIRA from a Browser

You can access JIRA from any computer with network access to your JIRA server by opening a supported web browser on the computer and visiting this URL:

http://<computer_name_or_IP_address>:<HTTP_port_number>

where:

<computer_name_or_IP_address> is the name or IP address of the computer on which JIRA is installed and
<HTTP_port_number> is the HTTP port number specified when you installed JIRA (above).

If JIRA does not appear in your web browser, you may need to change the port that JIRA runs on.

3. Run the Setup Wizard

See Running the Setup Wizard.

4. Next Steps

See JIRA 101 to start creating Projects, creating Users, and customising your JIRA instance.
If you did not install JIRA as a service, you will need to start JIRA manually every time you restart your computer. To change your JIRA installation to run as a service, please see Running JIRA as a Service.
To get the most out of JIRA, please see Optimising Performance.

Performing an Unattended Installation

If you have previously installed JIRA using the installation wizard (above), you can use a configuration file from this JIRA installation (called response.varfile) to re-install 'unattended mode' without any user input required.

Installing JIRA in unattended mode saves you time if your previous JIRA installation was used for testing purposes and you need to install JIRA on multiple server machines based on the same configuration.