Upgrade Confluence from 3.4.2 --> 3.5.13 -->4.3.1

[William]

Dear,

Currently the confluence wiki system needs to be upgraded from confluence 3.4.2 to 4.3.1, and we use the system as a knowledge base within the company Intranet. We have two potential solutions for this migration:

Solution 1: Confluence 3.4 à Confluence 3.5 à Confluence 4.3

Ÿ Install Conflunece 3.5 on new server;

Ÿ Import content from the old system(confluence3.4) to the new(confluence3.5) system, at the same time, check the status of plugins' work.

Ÿ After the system with version Confluence 3.5 works OK, next will be migrated to Confluence 4.3, accordding to the instruction on : https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Upgrading+Confluence+Manually

Solution 2: Confluence 3.4 à Confluence 4.3

Ÿ Install Confluence 4.3 directly on new VM server

Ÿ Import system content from old system Confluence 3.4 to the new system Confluence 4.3, and check the status of plugins' work. but this may cause lots of problems.

So can anybody help to check which solution is better, easy for operation, minimum the effect on users, decrease the downtime...

Or it will be appreciate that somebody may have the experience and share with me? Some helpful documents and files are preferred.

Thank you.

Best Regards

William

[Jeremy Largman · Accepted solution]

There are a lot of variables in an upgrade, so it's hard to anticipate the particular challenge (if any) you might have. You can get a sense of the myriad of possible glitches in the knowledge base. That's not to scare you off, just to say there are lots of little things that have a small chance of going wrong, so it's hard to predict.

Personally if I were doing it (and what I recommend to everyone in this situation in tech support) is to do the migration first, then the 2-step upgrade.

1. Migrate the 3.4.2 instance over to the new box: https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Migrating+Confluence+Between+Servers
2. Upgrade to 3.5, the manual technique. Don't worry about plugins at this point (you'll likely have to upgrade them again at 4.3); instead, check that your user management works. That's the main thing that happens in the 3.5 upgrade. Your LDAP repository can connect, users can log in and have the right access.
3. Upgrade to 4.3 (or latest). Then check your plugins.

[William]

Dear Jeremy,

Thanks for your suggestion, but I still have two questions:

1. The old system is running on Windows Server 2003, and the new server which we will migrate to is running on Windows Server 2008 R2 OS, so accordding to the information on https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Migrating+Confluence+Between+Servers , should we view this as "Transfer to Different OS" or "Transfer to same OS"?
2. When upgrade the system, just as I mentioned above that there are two methods,:

• one is direct upgrade, accordding to the method on https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Upgrading+Confluence+Manually ;
• The other is firstly install a empty system and import content via "backup and restore" from old system to the new one.

So with your experience of confluence management, could you help to recommed that which is relatively more safety and with minimum effect on users? Since I'm a starter for confluence and know not so much about management.

Thank you do much.

Regards

William

[Jeremy Largman]

1- should we view this as "Transfer to Different OS" or "Transfer to same OS"?

I'm not sure, to be honest. I think you'll get away with same OS, but you'll likely at least need a new windows registry entry (reinstall it as a service), but you'd need to do that anyways.

2 - So with your experience of confluence management, could you help to recommed that which is relatively more safety and with minimum effect on users? Since I'm a starter for confluence and know not so much about management.

I like the direct upgrade method. Restore from XML backup adds unnecessary complexity.