Testing External Database in Evaluation Installation

[Heather Selbe]

I am attempting to set up a test instance of Confluence 6.4 for a user in my network, and we plan to use Postgres for the database if we decide to move to production. I would like to configure the evaluation install to use postgres to ensure I understand how they talk and get a handle on configuration beforehand. I saw some answers where it seems like this was possible in Confluence 5.x but I do not see any documentation on if and how this is done with the evaluation version. Is this possible at all, or will I have to wait until we buy a production version to work on hooking in postgres to Confluence?

[Ryan Kearney]

Hi Heather,

First off, that is definitely possible. Atlassian actually develops on Postgres, and it is the preffered database for these tools. Not to mention it is free and reliable! The eval version will work just like production. Whenever you first load up Confluence, choose the production install option. After that, it will ask you for info about your external database. 

One thing I would recommend, since you are just trying things out, is working with docker here. You can boot up a Confluence Docker image with the commands below. After that, just put a DB somewhere and point to it. The docker image can stop, start, be killed, etc. and the data will remain in the external database. If you do happen to kill the container instead of stop, you would lose the filesystem data of course.


1. Download & install Dockerhttps://docs.docker.com/docker-for-mac/install/
2. (IN TERMINAL) docker run --detach --publish 8080:8080 cptactionhank/atlassian-confluence:latest
3. (IN BROWSER) http://localhost:8080/

[Heather Selbe]

Thank you! I got confused in thinking I needed a full license to use the production server, but now I see the link to get an evaluation license.

[Ryan Kearney]

Sweet, good luck!