Move to a non-clustered installation
This page outlines how to switch from a clustered Confluence deployment to a non-clustered deployment. In these instructions, we'll assume that you'll use one of your existing cluster nodes as your new, non-clustered installation.
Run Confluence in a cluster with one node
If you no longer need clustering for high availability or managing load, you can simply reduce the number of application nodes in your cluster to one. There are some advantages to this setup, as it is very easy to add more nodes if you require them in future, but there is a small performance overhead as Confluence will still operate as a cluster.
Move to a non-clustered installation
If you no longer need clustering and you want to avoid the overhead that comes from running a cluster with just one node, you can go back to a non-clustered (sometimes known as standalone) Data Center installation.
In these instructions, we'll assume that you'll use one of your existing cluster nodes as your new, non-clustered installation. You'll also need to make some infrastructure changes as part of the switch. We recommend completing this process in a staging environment, and running a set of functional tests, integration tests, and performance tests, before making these changes in production.
Terminology
In this guide we'll use the following terminology:
- Installation directory – The directory where you installed Confluence.
- Local home directory – The home or data directory stored locally on each cluster node (if Confluence is not running in a cluster, this is simply known as the home directory).
- Shared home directory – The directory you created that is accessible to all nodes in the cluster via the same path.
1. Shut down Confluence
Make sure read-only mode is turned off, then stop Confluence on all cluster nodes before you proceed.
2. Configure your load balancer
Configure your load balancer to redirect traffic away from all Confluence nodes, except the node you plan to keep.
If you no longer need your load balancer, you can remove it at this step.
3. Move items in the cluster shared home back to local home
To move everything back to your local home:
- Create a directory called
/shared-homein the<confluence-home>directory on the node you plan to keep (if you removed this directory when you set up clustering). - Move the following directories and files from your
<shared home>directory to the<local home>/shared-homedirectory- config/
- confluence.cfg.xml
- dcl-document/
- dcl-document_hd
- dcl-thumbnail/
secrets-config.yaml
keys/
secured/
Help to find these directories and files is available on the page Confluence Home and other important directories.
- Move the remaining contents of your <shared-home> directory to the root of your
<confluence-home>directory. Make sure your attachments directory is moved as part of this step.
Your cluster's shared home directory should now be empty.
Make sure you don't accidentally overwrite the confluence.cfg.xml in your local home directory. The confluence.cfg.xml file from your shared home directory doesn't contain the same parameters as the one in your local home directory.
From Confluence 7.12, you can choose to skip this step and keep your existing shared home directory. For example, this may be beneficial if you're using elastic storage for the <shared-home>/attachments directory and want to keep that setup.
4. Modify cluster properties
- Take a backup of the existing
<confluence-home>/confluence.cfg.xml - Edit
<confluence-home>/confluence.cfg.xml Change the
setupTypeparameter fromclustertocustom:<setupType>custom</setupType>Remove all cluster properties that begin with
confluence.cluster.See examplesHere are some example cluster properties that should be removed. These will vary depending on how you configured your cluster.
confluence.cluster confluence.cluster.address confluence.cluster.home confluence.cluster.interface confluence.cluster.join.type confluence.cluster.name If you chose to keep your shared home directory at the previous step, do not remove the confluence.cluster.homeproperty, or Confluence will not know where to find your shared home, or attachments directory.Save the file.
5. Start Confluence
Restart Confluence.
To confirm you're now running a standalone installation, go to Administration menu 
, then General Configuration > Clustering.
The active cluster should no longer appear. Instead, you'll see information about getting started with clustering, and the option to enable cluster mode.
Additional steps if you have a Synchrony cluster
If you also have a Synchrony cluster, but would prefer to let Confluence manage Synchrony for you, you'll need to make some additional changes.
See Migrate from a standalone Synchrony cluster to managed Synchrony. This guide assumes you're running Confluence in a cluster, but the steps are similar for a non-clustered installation.