Installing GoCD server on Windows

Installation
- Silent (Headless) Installation
Overriding default startup arguments and environment
Location of GoCD server files
Copying existing config to a new GoCD Server instance

Installation

You must be logged in as a user with Administrator privileges to install the GoCD server on Windows.

Download a version of go-server from the downloads page.
Double-click the go-server-${version}.exe installer file and follow the prompts to install Go.
During installation you will be asked to select a directory that will serve as the root path for your GoCD server installation. GoCD server will store all of its associated data in this directory by default
You will next be prompted to choose the bundled JRE or specify the location of JRE (or JDK) installed on your system.
At the end of the installation, GoCD server will register itself as a windows service owned by 'Local System' and start running automatically
Shortcuts to GoCD will be placed on your Desktop and in your Start Menu for convenience - double-click the shortcut to GoCD to the GoCD dashboard

Silent (Headless) Installation

You may use this method if you would like to script the installation of the GoCD server.

go-server-${version}-setup.exe /S /GO_SERVER_JAVA_HOME=<PATH_TO_JAVA_HOME> /D=<PATH_TO_SERVER_DIRECTORY>

Argument	Required	Description
`GO_SERVER_JAVA_HOME`	No	The path to a JRE (or JDK) that the server should run with. Defaults to the jre packaged with the server. Needs to be at-least Java 8.
`PATH_TO_SERVER_DIRECTORY`	No	The path where the server should be installed. Defaults to `C:\Program Files(x86)\Go Server`.

For example:

C:\> go-server-16.1.0-1234-setup.exe /S /D=C:\go\server

If User Access Control feature is enabled on your Windows system, it needs to be turned off for silent installation to work.

If you are using the silent installation to upgrade GoCD, you should not specify the Installation-Directory option.

Overriding default startup arguments and environment

Create a file named config/wrapper-properties.conf where you installed the server
Copy any specific properties, or add new properties from config/wrapper-server.conf into this file. Be sure to increment the property index if you're adding any new properties.
For e.g. to override the -Xmx to 12GB, override wrapper.java.additional.2 -
```
# config/wrapper-properties.conf
wrapper.java.additional.2=-Xmx12g
```

To append additional JVM args to the server

# config/wrapper-properties.conf
# since the last "wrapper.java.additional" index is 15, we use the next available index.
wrapper.java.additional.16=-Dcruise.config.foo=bar

Each property must be configured separately

# Having a single property for multiple configurations is invalid, e.g
wrapper.java.additional.16="-Dcruise.config.foo='bar' -Dcruise.config.other='baz'"

Valid properties,
wrapper.java.additional.16=-Dcruise.config.foo=bar
wrapper.java.additional.17=-Dcruise.config.other=baz

Please note : If the go-server as an application is run by any user, then this user needs to have these required permissions to the go-server folder, i.e. modify, read and execute, list folder contents and read permissions.

Location of GoCD server files

All the files for the GoCD server are under the root installation path on Windows. The default location is C:\Program Files\Go Server.

Copying existing config to a new GoCD Server instance

You can replicate a GoCD server with all the pipeline, stage, job, tasks and materials definitions/configuration intact.

To do this, the administrator should copy cruise-config.xml from the config directory to the new server and clear serverId attribute of server tag.

Note: Copying just the cruise-config.xml file will not migrate the historical pipeline data and artifacts. Please see the page on backing up the GoCD Server to fully migrate an existing GoCD server.

Also see...

Windows