Is a re-index required after upgrading JIRA?

[LISA Wilson]

Hi. I've always done a re-index as part of my upgrade procedure, running a locked reindex after the upgrade. But our instance has grown larger over the years, and now takes a very long time to run. (Around two hours.) This makes for a very long install night and causes an unacceptably long JIRA outage for our users.  

My question is, is a re-index required or recommended as part of the upgrade process? 

Thanks! 

[Fabio Racobaldo _Herzum_ · Accepted solution]

Hi Lisa,

reindexing is suggested after an upgrade a major configuration changes (https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver/re-indexing-after-major-configuration-changes-938847716.html). Upgrade, usually, involves plugins upgrade so my suggestion is to maintain reindexing as part of your upgrade process.

If you want to save time, you could try to perform reindexing from scratch. This operation usually is faster than normal locked reindexing

1. Stop JIRA

2. Make a backup of the following directory and all its sub-directories:

   $JIRA_HOME/caches/indexes

3. Remove that directory and all its sub-directories:

   $JIRA_HOME/caches/indexes

4. Start JIRA
5. Perform a locked/full re-index of JIRA

Try it in a your non production instance so you can compare time.

Ciao,

Fabio

[LISA Wilson]

Thank you, Fabio! I will give that a try in our Dev environment.