Migration options from Confluence 3.4.7

[PAUL MENA]

I have inherited a fairly active (several updates per week) Confluence instance running version 3.4.7 and Java 1.6 on CentOS 5.11 and old hardware. The current plan is to migrate the server and data to a VM in a new data center but to keep the existing O/S, Java and Confluence versions intact. Given that CentOS 5 has been end-of-lifed since March 2017, I'd like to migrate to an updated O/S at the very least. The possibility of migrating to the cloud offering is also in play.

The way I see it, I have 3 options:

1. migrate the current data to a VM with the same O/S, Java and Confluence version
2. migrate the current data to a VM with an updated O/S, Java and perhaps updated Confluence version
3. migrate the current data to the Cloud

Disclaimer: I know nothing about the relative costs involved. Right now I'm assessing whether or not options #2 or #3 are even possible given the age of the current system. Please feel free to redirect me to any existing threads or documentation about this topic, and thank you in advance!

[Alexis Robert · Accepted solution]

Hi @PAUL MENA ,

I would strongly advise to upgrade to a recent Confluence version, as the one you're using is full of security issues as it's several years old.

In my experience, it will be quite hard to do this as you'll need several intermediate upgrades to get to Confluence 7.x (the current active version), as you can see in the Upgrade Path page : https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/upgrading-confluence-4578.html#UpgradingConfluence-1.Determineyourupgradepath

Even for a Cloud migration, you'll need to first upgrade the Server version to consider moving your content. This is what I would be recommending,  as the Server version will be end of life in 2024 anyway.

Let me know if this helps, 

--Alexis

[PAUL MENA]

Thank you for the informative reply. It seems that at the very least I would need to do 4 upgrades to get from 3.4.7 to 7.X - and that's before considering migration to the Cloud - which would be my preference. My current marching orders are to clone the VM as is, although long term we have plenty of work ahead of us.