This page contains instructions for upgrading an existing Confluence cluster.

If you are not yet running a clustered instance of Confluence, see Moving to Confluence Data Center.

In this guide we'll use the following terminology:

  • installation directory - this is the directory where you installed Confluence on each node.
  • local home directory - this is the home or data directory on each node (in non-clustered Confluence this is simply known as the home directory).
  • shared home directory - this is a directory that is accessible to all nodes in the cluster via the same path. If you're upgrading from Confluence 5.4 or earlier you'll create this directory as part of the upgrade.  

On this page:

Step 1 Back up

We strongly recommend that you backup your Confluence home and install directories and your database before proceeding.

More information on specific files and directories to backup can be found in Upgrading Confluence.

Step 2 Stop the cluster

You must stop all the nodes in the cluster before upgrading. 

We recommend configuring your load balancer to redirect traffic away from Confluence until the upgrade is complete on all nodes.

Step 3 Create a shared home directory

(warning) If you are upgrading an existing Confluence Data Center instance (Confluence 5.6 or later), you can skip this step, as you already have a Shared Home directory.

To set up your Shared Home directory:

  1. Create a directory that is accessible to all cluster nodes via the same path. This will be your shared home directory. 

  2. Edit confluence.cfg.xml in the home directory on the first node and add a new property called confluence.cluster.home with the path of the shared home directory as the value. Example:

    <property name="confluence.cluster.home">/mnt/confluence-shared-home</property>

  3. Move all the files/directories from the local home directory the first node to the new shared home directory except for the following: 

    • config
    • confluence.cfg.xml
    • index
    • temp
    • bundled-plugins
    • plugin-cache-*
    • plugins-cache
    • plugins-osgi-cache
    • plugins-temp

     Remove the moved files/directories from the local home directories on all other nodes.

Step 4 Upgrade the first node

To upgrade the first node:

  1. Extract (unzip) the files to a directory (this will be your new installation directory, and must be different to your existing installation directory)
  2. Update the following line in the <Installation-Directory>\confluence\WEB-INF\classes\confluence-init.properties file to point to the existing local home directory on that node.
  3. Copy the jdbc driver jar file from your existing Confluence installation directory to  confluence/WEB-INF/lib in your new installation directory. 
    The jdbc driver will be located in either the <Install-Directory>/common/lib or <Installation-Directory>/confluence/WEB-INF/lib directories. 
  4. Copy any other immediately required customisations from the old version to the new one (for example if you are not running Confluence on the default ports or if you manage users externally, you'll need to update / copy the relevant files - find out more in Upgrading Confluence Manually)
  5. Start Confluence, and and confirm that you can log in and view pages before continuing to the next step.

You should now reapply any additional customisations from the old version to the new version, before upgrading the remaining nodes.

Step 5 Upgrade the other nodes

To upgrade the next node in your cluster:

  1. Stop Confluence on the first node.
  2. Copy the installation directory and home directory from the first node to the next node. 
    If the path to the local home directory is different on this node, edit the confluence-init.properties to point to the correct location. 
  3. Start Confluence, and and confirm that you can log in and view pages before continuing with the next node.

Repeat this process for each remaining node. 

Step 6 Start Confluence and check cluster connectivity 

Once all nodes have been upgraded you can start Confluence Data Center on each node, one at a time. 

The Cluster monitoring console ( > General Configuration > Clustering) includes information about the active cluster nodes. When the cluster is running properly, you should be able to see the details of each node. 

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