How does Backbone affect server performance?

The information collected on this page mainly refers to the Backbone usage on Jira Server. Only a few points are valid for Jira Cloud. If in doubt, please reach out to help@k15t.com.

The Jira Server performance is affected by Backbone by the following main factors:

Amount of Backbone synchronizations configured on a Jira instance
Amount of initially synchronized issues per synchronization
Amount of issue changes per sync interval per synchronization
Allocated memory for the Jira instance

By default, a Backbone synchronization is configured to run a query every 5 seconds per project. This query finds all updated issues within one project since the last query has been made. This means, by default Backbone is sending two queries every 5 seconds. You can adjust this sync interval if necessary or if you see any server performance issues.

Based on a usual issue change rate in Jira, this query is usually empty and therefore Backbone should not stress your Jira too much. For example, we have customers using Backbone in projects with more than 50k issues per project with a 5 second interval without any problems. For further information and suggestions, read the section about server resources in our System requirements.