draw.io’s farewell to Server: our memorial Zen garden

Making peace with Atlassian Server end of support

To commemorate Atlassian Server coming to an end, and all the years it has been a steadfast companion for many Confluence and Jira users, we decided to build a Zen garden, in its memory. Support for Server products will end on February 15, 2024 – find out what this means for you.

Server has been instrumental for all sorts of companies from non-profits to global tech giants for decades, offering them an on-premise, secure solution to document and share knowledge, boost productivity, and perform at scale. It’s transformed how we build, deploy, and manage applications today. For Atlassian specifically, it’s laid the foundations to develop their Cloud-first strategy as well as its Data Center provision.

Getting started

With end of support taking place this week, it felt like an appropriate time to celebrate the importance of Server with a memorial. The Zen garden is situated in our office here in Wiesbaden, Germany. It will serve not only as a long-lasting dedication to Server, but also as a space for people to pause and reflect, and be an area that everyone can enjoy for their own reasons.

Rather fortuitously, the Zen garden build coincided with a visit from a couple of our colleagues from the US and Canada, who were also willing to get their hands dirty and lend a helping hand!

We learned a lot along the way of building the garden. Below, we take a look at the hard work that went into the planning and building, and what our key takeaways were from the experience.

The steps involved

Our first step was to work with our Space Creator Team to find the right space for the Zen garden. The result was a corner of the roof terrace, approximately 10 square feet in size, that would fit the bill.

Finding a place for the Zen garden

The next step was deciding on the right plants and decoration for the garden. Of course color, maintenance, and how much the plants will grow were all factors considered – but most importantly – which will thrive in the variable and inclement German weather conditions! We also decided on a lantern ornament in keeping with the overall theme, and to tie the garden together.

The space we used had very specific dimensions in a right-angled alcove, so to visualize our Zen garden we turned to the one tool that could serve our purposes – our very own draw.io!

Planning the Zen garden layout and features in draw.io

With the location decided and a blueprint of the garden, we turned to our trusty Subject Matter Expert, Basti who, it turns out, is also a subject expert on Zen gardens! He took a trip to the DIY store to purchase the supplies we would need.

Our more practical team members then got building the Zen garden foundations.

A Ryoba saw seemed very fitting for the occasion!

Once the foundations were down and the gravel and soil added, it was time to roll up our sleeves and get potting!

As members of the team potted the plants, it was interesting to see who in the team seemed to be more experienced with gardening – some would carefully break up the roots and embed the plant deep into the soil; others just popped the plant straight into the ground!

Putting our new-found friend, “Drake”, to good use

The final touches

With the Zen garden complete, it was time to take stock and see how our hard work had paid off.

Our Social Media Coordinator, Charis, took the final video footage of the finished Zen garden, which felt uncannily like some kind of technological baptism for the garden.

The completed Zen garden

A time to pause and reflect

We learned a number of things along the way: the value of hard work, and the pride we can all feel in the finished piece from the fruits of our labor. That teamwork makes things go much more smoothly, and lastly, that the Zen garden is an ongoing process that will require regular upkeep to remain pristine and decluttered.

There are certainly parallels to be drawn between building a Zen garden and ensuring a smooth migration: taking stock of the current landscape; identifying which apps are still useful and which need a good pruning; and performing a pre-migration data cleanup to ensure you’re not carrying any excess baggage with you. All of this leaves your new Confluence/Jira instance decluttered and ready-to-go, and regular maintenance will ensure it stays that way.

Some personal takeaways:

• It’s better to plan where any small potted plants will go, before actually planting them.
• Fargesia is very heavy.
• Lastly: It’s rather cold in Germany – perhaps it’s better to build a Zen garden in summer!

Looking ahead to the future

Four years ago, Atlassian announced the discontinuation of Server products. For companies big and small, we know people have done amazing things with Server-based tools, and Atlassian’s products have laid the foundation for much of the SaaS products we use today.

Atlassian’s pledges for Server, i.e. a secure solution to document and share knowledge, boost productivity, and perform at scale, still persist today for Atlassian Cloud and Data Center. These pledges are also very much at the heart of draw.io: we offer live, real-time collaboration on diagrams (in Cloud) to help teams work together effectively. Our enterprise-grade security and privacy standards mean your diagrams are always secure – we don’t see or track your use of draw.io.

As we say farewell to Server, we look forward to seeing how lives will be improved with the new era of Cloud and Data Center.

If you are migrating from Server and wish to find out more about your options, please see our related blogpost: What does the future of draw.io look like after Server EOL?

Grow with draw.io

Want to dive deeper into the world of draw.io? Access our linktr.ee page to follow us on social media and learn how others use draw.io, as well as pick up some helpful tips and tricks.