Moving Confluence and upgrading

[Joe Roper]

We currently have version 5.10.3 of Confluence running on Windows Server 2008R2 with an Oracle 11g database.  Need to move to a new server running Windows 2012 and Oracle 18c, also need to upgrade to the newest version of Confluence.  All of the documentation that I have found says that an upgrade can not be done at the same time as the migration to new environment.  I do not have the original 5.10.3 install files so I can't install that version on the new server and then upgrade.  What are my options?  Could someone please give me some detailed instructions on accomplishing my goal?

Thank You

[Dave Theodore [Coyote Creek Consulting] · Accepted solution]

First things first, you need to review the Supported Platforms page for the version you want to upgrade to. This is to ensure that you build things in a supported (and tested) manner. You have 2 choices of supported Oracle versions: Oracle 12c Release 1 and Oracle 12c Release 2. 

Atlassian's Download Archives have all the older versions, so you can find your version there.

Finally, you need to review the Upgrade Notes for Confluence to see if there is any special upgrade procedure for the versions in question. You can select the major.minor version from the dropdown at the upper right. You will need to look through all the versions between 5.10 and the version you want to upgrade to, with 6.15 being the latest version. Any interim jumps that you need to make will be documented in the Upgrade Notes.

My recommendation would be to build the new box, migrate over the data and get everything running on 5.10.3, then perform the upgrade.  You should have the least problems this way. Obviously do this in test before doing it in production.  I would also recommend reviewing the 3rd party Apps that you have installed.  Some that were free may no longer be free.  It's also possible that some Apps do not exist for the latest version of Confluence, which will mean some loss of functionality that you want to make your customers aware of.  

Finally, there are two (here and here) pretty nasty vulnerabilities in recent versions that you should be aware of. I wouldn't, under any circumstances, go live on a vulnerable version. If you are not able to run the latest version for some reason, you should install one of the older non-vulnerable versions.