How can I migrate a large Confluence instance from Windows to Linux?

[Doug McLean]

We have a large Confluence 3.2.1 instance (5 GB database, 65 GB attachments) running on Windows 2003 32-bit server and MSSQL 2005. We'd like to migrate to RedHat 5.x or 6.x, probably with Oracle database. Is there a supported method for this kind of migration aside from XML export/import? Thanks

[Gerri Urban]

Atlassian has a page out there for migrating confluence between servers: http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Migrating+Confluence+Between+Servers

For large instances you just need to make sure you get your database exported properly - not sure what the changes will be going from sql to oracle - in the brief search I did there are multi options for doing this - but please test to make sure it's all working.

The same applies for going from Linuz to confluence. I did that (long ago on version 2) but the same still applies - the first thing to do is get your new server set up for confluence 3.1.2 - make it the same version of everything you are running on the Linux side, then export your database, copy over your attachments and put them all on the new server - I would strongly recommend making a snapshot of your server prior to trying with your data - if I recall it took me several attempts to get everything working as expected - once you have your procedures, do the final backup, shutdown the old and bring up the new - don't forget to get your certs setup and tested - you will most likely have to get them reissued for the different OS.

Good luck!

Lirria

[Doug McLean]

Thanks to all for the comments - I'm in the process of setting up a test instance of our Confluence production instance on a RHEL 5.4 VM. One wrinkle: we're initially going to try and keep MSSQL 2005 as the backend database (on a separate VM, obviously %>}). I'll let you know how it turns out.

[Gerri Urban]

I'm sure it will be fine - once you get the database connected the rest should be cake.

Lirria

[Doug McLean]

Just to close this out - everything worked fine, Lirria, your answer had the link I needed with all the answers - thanks!

[Ben Boucher]

Any advice on how to go the other way, from an older existing Linux installation of Confluence 3.1.2 to a Windows based Confluence 4.0 install?

[JamieA]

The XML export/import will probably run out of memory, at least it did when I attempted a similar size migration. However it's the easiest option so give that a try first.

But you could move the instance to linux and get all the good stuff without actually moving the database, you could leave that on sql server. At least consider a phased migration where you do the database at a different time.

If the worst comes to the worst you might have to do what I did, which was a scripted space-by-space export and import. Slow.