The document discusses improving disaster recovery for Jira by backing up attachment files more frequently. It proposes querying Jira to get information on new attachments and using the project key, issue number, and attachment ID to programmatically generate the file path for more efficient incremental backups that could reduce hours of backup time to just minutes. The approach is still in development but working as a proof of concept to improve disaster recovery quality for Jira.

1. Better Disaster Recovery
for Jira
Matt Doar
mdoar@linkedin.com

2. San Francisco, 1906

3. How do you back up your Jira Server data?
XML backups are not intended for production
Database - “our DB administrators handle that using the DB tools”
The Jira home directory with all those attachment files?
1. scp to copy files elsewhere - copies everything but takes a long time
2. rsync to copy new files elsewhere - faster but it has to scan directories
3. Some kind of whole disk snapshot

4. LinkedIn today
● We have 1.4 million attachments (the maximum size is 20MB)
● We have a custom script that runs rsync once an hour
● Copies the changed files to another data center far, far away
● Uses 26 parallel rsync processes
● Never deletes any data
To avoid any data loss we would like to run the script more often than hourly
But just checking the timestamps of 1.4 million files can take some time

5. LinkedIn tomorrow: a new approach
Step 1. Ask Jira for the information about new attachment files
SELECT p.id, p.pkey, ji.issuenum, fa.id, fa.filename,
fa.filesize, fa.created
FROM fileattachment fa
JOIN jiraissue ji on ji.id = fa.issueid
JOIN project p on p.id = ji.project
WHERE fa.id > last_id_checked
ORDER BY fa.id ASC

6. LinkedIn tomorrow: a wrinkle
When you rename a project key, the attachments directory name does not change
Step 2. Find the original project key for each project
SELECT * FROM project_key pk ORDER BY ID
● The project_key table can have multiple rows for each Jira project
● The row with lowest id is the original project key for each project

7. LinkedIn tomorrow: the attachment’s filename
Step 3. Create the file name of each attachment (since Jira 7.0)
bucket = ((long(issue_num)-1)/10000 + 1) * 10000
issue_key = “project_key-issue_num”
filename =
data_dir/project_key/bucket/issue_key/attachment_id

8. Does it work?
Still in development, but working as a proof of concept
This approach is expected to reduce backup time from hours to minutes
The quality of our disaster recovery will improve!

9. Lots more Jira administration suggestions!

10. Search for “Jira Technologist”
https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/jira-technologist-at-linkedin-649816636/
We’re hiring!