License renewal questions before migration

[Girish_Shenoy]

One of the clients hasn't renewed their JIRA software for 4 years now. They are on 6.x. need clarification on following questions.

1) Since client is on 6.x Can we export the .XML and import to cloud? or should we upgrade JIRA to 7.13.X so it can support migration to cloud.

2) How about the license renewal? Since its already past 4 years, can customer renew the license now? Or will it be considered new purchase? My guess is, it will be considered as a new purchase.

3) I read in the community post that Lets say customers license expired in  September 2018. If JIRA 7.13.X was released before Sept 2018, customer can still go ahead and upgrade their JIRA instance from 6.X to 7.13.X is that correct? Need validation. It will allow, but JIRA may stop functioning unless you enter valid key.

Please help.

[Ismael Jimoh · Accepted solution]

1. No you cannot. There are lots of changes to Jira between versions hence you must first upgrade to the latest version of Jira (latest LTS at least)and then only migrate to cloud. 
2. I will not recommend renewal since renewal will count from when their license expired (I think). Instead purchase a new license entirely instead of renewing.
3. That is correct. However please read the upgrade notes. There are lots of things to note especially in the upgrade between Jira 6 and 7. In particular if JSD is involved. There are more things to consider when going I Jira 8 so you must plan properly an upgrade path.

Regards

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

So, the answer to 3 is probably the most important, but:

1. No.  There are broadly three ways to migrate your Server data to Cloud -
   1. XML export and import - sounds easy but only works when the Server version you export from is very recent.  7.x will almost certainly fail and there's no chance of a 6.x working.  I wouldn't even bother trying a Jira export/import from anything under 8.13 at the moment.
   2. Atlassian's Jira Cloud Migration assistant - works brilliantly for uncomplicated Jiras, but if you've customised it, used some of the more obscure functions, or apps that do not yet have fully supported migration paths, you're going to need to put some thought into it.  JCMA only works with Jira 7.6 and above.
   3. Roll your own migration (a mix of things possibly including JCMA, apps like configuration manager or project configurator, autoblocks, scriptrunner, REST scripts, CSV imports, manual setups and and and)
2. No new server licences are being sold, you would have to renew for the four years!
3. Yes, you are spot-on.  Your licence entitles you to use any version of Jira released before the expiry data of the licence. 

I'd recommend going up to the highest version of Jira you can get to under your licence, then look at migrating from there.  You don't say which 6.x you are on, but your path should be 6.x -> 6.4 -> 7.0 -> 7.highest  (Do not skip 7.0, it can do "interesting" things to your data if you miss it out, stuff that only appears to go wrong in 7.8+ and when you're exporting to go to Cloud)