Migrating Confluence to Kubernetes

Jun 17, 2025 — Kyungmin Park

This document explains the process of migrating an existing Confluence installation to Kubernetes.

💡

Confluence 8.5.17 to 9.2.5

Pre-configured resources

Rook ceph(Block, Filesystem)
cert-manager
Nginx ingress controller
DB(PostgreSQL)

Helm Chart

Version: v3.17.3(GoVersion: go1.23.7)

Add the Helm chart repository

helm repo add atlassian-data-center \
  https://atlassian.github.io/data-center-helm-charts

Check Atlassian product version with chart version

helm search repo atlassian-data-center/confluence

Get `values.yaml` command

helm show values altassian-data-center/confluence --version 1.22.0 > values.yaml

Editing `values.yaml`

Modify according to your configuration.

Create namespace

kubectl create ns atlassian

Deploy helm chart

Confluence version: 8.5.17

helm install confluence \
 atlassian-data-center/confluence \
 -f values.yaml \
 -n atlassian \
 --version 1.22.0

Check deployment

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The purpose of this initial startup is to intentionally enter an invalid database URL in order to create an empty Persistent Volume (PV) for Confluence data(application-data, shared-home) migration.

Data Migration

Process for importing existing application data and using it in the existing environment

Migration strategy

Confluence deploy(replicas=1) with empty data(application-data, shared-home)
Get application-data directory from as-is confluence instance(Rsync in to-be confluence pod)
Get shared-home directory from as-is confluence instance(Rsync in to-be confluence pod)
Confluence pod delete for restart
Check confluence data
Scale the Confluence pod from 1 to 2

Upgrade

Upgrade strategy

replicas 0(shutdown all Confluence pod)
Helm chart upgrade

Shutdown all Confluence pod

kubectl scale statefulset --replicas 0 -n atlassian confluence

For a Rolling upgrade, adjusting the replicas is not necessary.

Helm chart

Confluence version: 8.5.17 → 9.2.5

helm upgrade confluence \
 atlassian-data-center/confluence \
 --version 2.0.2 \
 -f values.yaml \
 -n atlassian

🗒️

During helm upgrade, pods are created based on the replicaCount in values.yaml, and the first pod performs the upgrade task.
The previous --replicas 0 setting is ignored.