Installing Confluence on Windows
This guide describes how to install a new Confluence installation on Windows using the installer. You can also install Confluence manually from a 'zip' archive - see Installing Confluence on Windows from Zip File for details.
If you are upgrading Confluence, please refer to the Upgrading Confluence guide.
Note: Some anti-virus or other Internet security tools may interfere with the Confluence installation process and prevent the process from completing successfully. If you experience or anticipate experiencing such an issue with your anti-virus/Internet security tool, disable this tool first before proceeding with the Confluence installation.
On this page:
Before you Start
- Ensure that your system meets the minimum requirements to run Confluence. See System Requirements, Supported Platforms and be sure to check the Database Configuration documentation for any specific requirements related to your chosen database.
- Have your Confluence license key ready. You can obtain a trial, free or commercial license, or retrieve your existing license key at my.atlassian.com.
Using the Installation Wizard
Use the installation wizard if you are installing Confluence on your server for the first time or you wish to specify your installation options.
If you have previously installed Confluence using the installation wizard and wish to re-install Confluence again with the same installation options, you can re-install Confluence in 'unattended mode' without any user input required (see below for details).
1. Download and Run the Confluence 'Windows Installer'
To install Confluence as a service, the Windows Installer must be run using a Windows administrator account. While you can run the Windows Installer with a non-administrator account, your installation options will be much more limited.
- Download the Confluence 'Windows Installer' (.exe) file.
- Run the installer file to start the installation wizard.
If a Windows 7 (or Vista) 'User Account Control' dialog box requests if you want to allow the installation wizard to make changes to your computer, click 'Yes'. If you do not, the installation wizard will have restricted access to your operating system and any subsequent installation options will be limited. - Choose between the 'Express Install' or 'Custom Install' options:
- Express Install — If you choose this option, Confluence will be installed with default settings which are shown in the next step of the installation wizard. If you want to customise any of these options, click the 'Back' button and choose the 'Custom Install' option instead.
- Custom Install — If you choose this option, Confluence will prompt you to specify the following options (which are presented during subsequent steps of the installation wizard and pre-populated with default values):
- The 'Destination Directory' in which to install Confluence.
- The Confluence Home and other important directories (which must be unique for each Confluence installation).
- The Windows 'Start' menu folder options.
- The TCP ports (i.e. an HTTP connector port and a control port) that Confluence will operate on.
- If you are running the installer using an administrator account, you will be prompted to 'Install Confluence as a service' (recommended). You can also do this manually later, as described in Start Confluence Automatically on Windows as a Service.
If you installed Confluence as a service, you must start Confluence through the Windows 'Start' menu, since Confluence will not start if you run start-confluence.batat the Windows Command Prompt.
- The installation wizard will install Confluence onto your operating system and will start Confluence automatically when the wizard finishes. Confluence will also be launched automatically in your browser window if you chose this option.
Please Note:
- If you chose to install Confluence as a service, the Confluence service will be run as the Windows 'SYSTEM' user account. To change this user account, see Changing the Windows user that the Confluence service uses.
- If you do not install Confluence as a service, then once started, Confluence will be run as the Windows user account under which Confluence was installed.
- If you use Confluence running on a Windows Server in production, we strongly recommend creating a dedicated user account (e.g. with username 'confluence') for running Confluence.
- For more information about creating a dedicated user account and defining which directories this account should have write access to, refer to our guidelines.
If your Windows Server is operating under Microsoft Active Directory, ask your Active Directory administrator to create a dedicated user account that you can use to run Confluence (with no prior privileges). - If Confluence is installed as a service, do not forget to change the user account that runs the Confluence service to your dedicated user account for running Confluence.
- For more information about creating a dedicated user account and defining which directories this account should have write access to, refer to our guidelines.
2. Starting Confluence
If Confluence is not already started, you can start Confluence using the appropriate Windows 'Start' menu shortcut or command prompt option.
Once Confluence is started, you can access Confluence from the appropriate Windows 'Start' menu shortcut or a browser on any computer with network access to your Confluence server.
2.1 Windows 'Start' Menu Shortcuts
The Installer will have created the following Windows 'Start' menu shortcuts:
- Access Confluence — opens a web browser window to access your Confluence application.
Your Confluence server must have been started for this shortcut to work. - Start Confluence Service — starts up the Apache Tomcat application server which runs your Confluence installation, so that you can access Confluence through your web browser.
- Stop Confluence Service — stops the Apache Tomcat application server which runs your Confluence installation. You will not be able to access Confluence through your web browser after choosing this shortcut.
- Uninstall Confluence — uninstalls Confluence from your Windows operating system.
2.2 Starting and Stopping Confluence from a Command Prompt
Enter the bin subdirectory of your Confluence installation directory and run the appropriate file:
start-confluence.bat(to start Confluence)stop-confluence.bat(to stop Confluence)
If you followed our guidelines for running Confluence with a dedicated user account, then to run Confluence as this user account (e.g. 'confluence'), use the runas command to execute start-confluence.bat. For example:
- >
runas /env /user:<DOMAIN>\confluence start-confluence.bat
(where<DOMAIN>is your Windows domain or computer name.)
2.3 Accessing Confluence from a Browser
You can access Confluence from any computer with network access to your Confluence server by opening a supported web browser on the computer and visiting this URL:
http://<computer_name_or_IP_address>:<HTTP_port_number>
where:
<computer_name_or_IP_address>is the name or IP address of the computer on which Confluence is installed and<HTTP_port_number>is the HTTP port number specified when you installed Confluence (above).
If Confluence does not appear in your web browser, you may need to change the port that Confluence runs on.
3. Run the Setup Wizard
See the Confluence Setup Guide.
4. Next Steps
- See Confluence Getting Started.
- If you did not install Confluence as a service, you will need to start Confluence manually every time you restart your computer. To change your Confluence installation to run as a service, please see Start Confluence Automatically on Windows as a Service.
- To get the most out of Confluence, please see Performance Tuning.
Performing an Unattended Installation
If you have previously installed Confluence using the installation wizard (above), you can use a configuration file from this Confluence installation (called response.varfile) to re-install 'unattended mode' without any user input required.
Installing Confluence in unattended mode saves you time if your previous Confluence installation was used for testing purposes and you need to install Confluence on multiple server machines based on the same configuration.
Please Note:
- The
response.varfilefile contains the options specified during the installation wizard steps of your previous Confluence installation. Hence, do not uninstall your previous Confluence installation just yet. - If you intend to modify the
response.varfilefile, please ensure all directory paths specified are absolute, for example,sys.installationDir=C\:\\Program Files\\Atlassian\\Confluence
Unattended installations will fail if any relative directory paths have been specified in this file.
Download and Run the Confluence 'Windows Installer' in Unattended Mode
- Download the Confluence 'Windows Installer' (.exe) file.
- Open the Windows command prompt and perform the remaining steps in the command prompt.
copytheresponse.varfilefile located in the.install4jsubdirectory of your previous Confluence installation directory, to the same location as the downloaded 'Windows Installer' file.
You can uninstall your previous Confluence installation after this step. Save your response.varfileif you need to install Confluence on multiple machines.Change directory (
cd) to the location of the 'Windows Installer' file and run the following command:atlassian-confluence-X.Y.exe -q -varfile response.varfileWhere:
X.Y— refers to the version of Confluence you are about to install.-q— instructs the installer to operate in unattended mode (i.e. 'quietly').-varfile response.varfile— specifies the configuration file containing the configuration options used by the installer. The location and name of the configuration file should be specified after the-varfileoption.
- Confluence will start automatically when the silent installation finishes. Continue from step 2 Starting Confluence (above).