Installing Dataplane

Database Configuration

Before installing Arsenale Dataplane, check your JIRA database server against the system requirements and recommendations.

Arsenale Dataplane stores all its data in the same database used by JIRA.

MySQL Database Performance Tuning

MySQL's default installation is not particularly optimized for performing database-intensive reporting operations. In particular, a stock configuration of MySQL can cause performance problems.

Although Arsenale Dataplane will generally work without needing to perform any specific MySQL configuration, some reports can take an exceedingly long time to run if your JIRA installation is large and MySQL has not been properly configured.

1. For best performance, the database user used by JIRA needs to be granted the "CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES" privilege. To grant this privilege, connect to the MySQL console and execute the following statement, and then restart your JIRA instance. (Substitute the same values into this query as you did when performing the original JIRA database setup.) 

   GRANT CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES ON <JIRADB>.* TO '<USERNAME>'@'<JIRA_SERVER_HOSTNAME>';
   FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

2. Before installing Arsenale Dataplane, we strongly recommend that you check your MySQL installation to ensure that JIRA is using the InnoDB database engine.  The InnoDB database is also the only MySQL storage engine officially supported by Atlassian for JIRA.
3. In addition, we recommend that you configure the InnoDB buffer pool to use as much physical memory as you have available on your database server. For JIRA installations with a few tens of thousands of issues, we recommend a minimum of one gigabyte, or more if possible. This cache will benefit JIRA as well as Arsenale Dataplane.
4. We also recommend enabling the MySQL query cache and setting the query cache size to at least 10 megabytes.

An example configuration of /etc/my.cnf with these modified settings looks like this:

[mysqld]

innodb_buffer_pool_size=1024M
query_cache_type = 1
query_cache_size = 10M

Microsoft SQL Server Database Configuration

To fully function under Microsoft SQL Server, Arsenale Dataplane requires the installation of a CLR function in your SQL Server environment. Without this function, Arsenale Dataplane will still install and function, although some aspects of certain reports may not work.

Arsenale provides the source code for this function, which is derived from an MSDN example, and which you can compile yourself using the instructions below. If you have trouble compiling this function, you can either reference sample compilation instructions from MSDN, or else contact Arsenale for support.

We have provided a pre-compiled ArsenaleStringUtils.dll file (based on .NET 3.5 and SQL Server 2008/x86) that you can download from here. To compile the function yourself, download the ArsenaleStringUtils.cs source from the Dataplane downloads page and execute the following:

path c:\windows\microsoft.net\framework\v3.5;%path%
csc /target:library ArsenaleStringUtils.cs

Once you have either compiled the file or downloaded the pre-built .DLL, load Microsoft SQL Management Studio and run the query listed in the panel below to install it.

<databasename> corresponds to the name of your JIRA database.

<compilation_path> corresponds to the path containing the (pre)compiled ArsenaleStringUtils.dll file.

SP_CONFIGURE 'clr enabled', 1
GO

RECONFIGURE
GO

USE <databasename>;
DECLARE @SamplePath nvarchar(1024)
Set @SamplePath = '<compilation_path>'
CREATE ASSEMBLY [ArsenaleStringUtils]
FROM @SamplePath + 'ArsenaleStringUtils.dll'
WITH permission_set = Safe;
GO

CREATE AGGREGATE [dbo].[ArsConcatenate](@input nvarchar(4000))
RETURNS nvarchar(4000)
EXTERNAL NAME [ArsenaleStringUtils].[Concatenate];
GO

To uninstall the function at a later date, you may also execute the following query from SQL Management Studio:

USE <databasename>;

DROP AGGREGATE [dbo].[concatenate]
GO

DROP ASSEMBLY [ArsenaleStringUtils]
GO

Dataplane Installation

Arsenale Dataplane is a standard JIRA add-on, and can be downloaded and installed from within the JIRA Universal Plugin Manager.

Alternatively, you may download the Dataplane .jar file and upload it to your JIRA installation manually via the same admin page.

Once installed, Arsenale Dataplane is accessible from the Dataplane Reports menu in the main JIRA navigation bar.

On JIRA 6.0 and above, if your browser window is not wide enough, the Dataplane Reports menu may get collapsed into the More menu option:

Linux Font Installation (Optional)

Dataplane can optionally make use of custom fonts so that chart titles and text are rendered more smoothly.

If your JIRA application server runs Linux, copy the Lato-Bol.ttf and Lato-Reg.ttf files from the Dataplane downloads page to your JRE font directory. For example, on RedHat Enterprise Linux, your JRE font directory directory is usually located at /usr/java/default/jre/lib/fonts/. Once you have copied the appropriate fonts to the JRE font directory, you must restart JIRA for the changes to take effect.

You can still use Dataplane without performing the above step, but the smooth text rendering will not appear until you have done so. It is also fine to copy the TTF files to the font directory now and defer the JIRA restart until a later date.