JIRA is a powerful and yet simple application, as reflected by its straightforward installation procedures. You have a wide variety of options to choose how you would like to install and configure your copy. You can mix and match different aspects, such as operating systems, and database to best suit your requirements. The best part is that you can have a setup that is comprised entirely of an open source software that will bring down your cost and provide you with a reliable infrastructure at the same time.

Now that you have a working instance of JIRA, we will start to explore various aspects of JIRA in the following chapters, starting with projects, which are the first key components in any JIRA installation.