In cases when JIRA's performance deteriorates or if the system becomes unstable or unresponsive, it is important to achieve two goals:
The second goal is strategically very important, however, it might get overlooked in a rush to make things work "now". For example, JIRA administrator may be inclined to restart a stuck JIRA instance quickly in order for it to get back to working state as fast as possible. But if thread dumps are not collected, the developers will never know where JIRA was stuck, so the same problem may happen again.
The first goal is of course also very important. Sometimes JIRA administrator manages to restore system functioning, sometimes help from Atlassian and ALM Works support teams is needed. Support engineers and developers would typically take into account all information they have, analyze it and try to pinpoint the source of the problem. Often additional information is required from the JIRA administrator, and sending requests and replies back and forth takes precious time.
This article is intended to provide JIRA administrators with advice about how to collect maximum information about a performance or stability problem, when that problem happens. The list is not intended to be complete, additional information may still be needed, however, providing all listed information gives a good chance that a support engineer will be able to identify a problem and provide advice sooner.
Thread DumpsThread dumps are the most important information when system is unresponsive or has performance issues. They allow to peek into what's going on inside JIRA's JVM process.
Verbose LoggingIf the problem has temporary but reproducible manner, you can turn on verbose logging so that the engineers can gather more information from the logs. To do so:
Then you can try to reproduce the problem and collect the support zip.
Support ZipSupport zip is the most important thing after thread dumps. It allows engineers to have full understanding of the environment and retrospect using the logs into what was going on. If you had Verbose Logging on before problem appeared, it gives even more details. To collect a support zip:
Browser Console LogIf the problem seems to be on the client side, in the browser – if there are errors or if the browser is hanging or some button or link does not respond, check out the browser's error console. Depending on the browser type, the console may be opened with different menus or keyboard shortcuts.
HAR ReportHAR report is also taken on the browser and contains logs of network communications with the server. Use this log to provide information that can help troubleshoot issues with slow loading of data or general slow responsiveness on the client side.
Screenshots or VideoWhen there's a visible and informative behavior demonstrated by the system, a screenshot or a video showing the problem would go a long way in getting the support engineers understand the issue.
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