Is it recommended to upgrade first jira software and/or servicedesk before upgrading jira core?

[Agustin Martin]

This question is in reference to Atlassian Documentation: How to update JIRA properly

Up util now I've always upgraded my JIRA installation by downloading the jira-software installer, executing it and afterwards upgrading JIRA servicedesk with the new obr.

However I always get errors related to servicedesk starting the new JIRA version after the installer upgrade, before the servicedesk upgrade.

By reading the linked doc page, it seems as if the proper way to upgrade a dual JIRA installation (software + servicedesk) would be to FIRST upgrade servicedesk with the obr, and SECOND, execute the binary install (to upgrade core + servicedesk).

Could this be clarified in the KB article?

Thanks!

[Agustin Martin · Accepted solution]

I asked support for clarifications and got some feedback:

The errors when upgrading happen only when you upgrade JIRA Core platform to a different major (I guess support meant minor) version. So if you upgrade from JIRA Core 7.0.x to JIRA Core 7.1.0 then at first startup you will see errors due to incompatibility on applications (jira-software or jira-service-desk) that worked on 7.0.x.

 If you really need to avoid the incompatibility errors during the upgrade you can, for example if you are using JIRA Software installer to upgrade JIRA instance, uninstall the JIRA Service Desk application and install the compatible version once you have successfully upgraded JIRA Core and JIRA Software.

 Please be advised that uninstalling a JIRA Application will not remove any project data from the database. However we do recommend you to first test these operations on a staging environment before applying to the production.

So if you are upgrading to a new patch version, you will have no problems.

If you are upgrading to a new minor version, you have two options:

a) Use jira-software installer, get conflicts with JSD, upgrade JSD (obr)

or

b) uninstall JSD, use jira-software installer, install JSD (obr)

Following either one of them you should end up with the same setup.

All things considered, since you will probably lose some time uninstalling JSD, you might as well stick with getting the errors in option a).

[Agustin Martin]

It seems it's not as simple as that (at least when you are jumping to the next minor version).

I just tried to upgrade servicedesk first with the obr, and it fails due to missing dependencies (probably because the core is not upgraded).