Migration and Upgrade of Jira 7.11 to 9.20 - preparation

[Stefan Weichinger]

I currently plan to move an existing Jira-Installation (7.11.1) from an old Ubuntu server to a fresh Debian-11.5 server (should be Jira-9.20). Both on-premise, both VMs in a VMware vSphere environment.

We tested this for months now and solved several issues on the way, now it's time to redo it all for the final migration.

So we have 9.2 running with the DB-content from back then .. and now we need to redo it because we need all the work done inbetween migrated as well.

For sure I browsed the docs and howtos for help, let me ask here if what I plan is the/a valid way to do this.

I plan to install 7.11 on the new server as well: migrate data and DB from old to new without any version change at first, then upgrade.

Issues here:

• postgres-13 would be the default on serverNEW, that gave me warnings in my test (because 7.x doesn't support it), but worked as far as I know
• I wonder how to handle the FQDN/URL: the URL should be kept, while the new server is named "jiratest.my.tld" .. I assume I could point the apache-rev-proxy on serverOLD to the jira-instance on serverNEW while moving etc ? Does it make sense to set up some temporary proxy BEFORE the migration? (the rev-proxies run on the instances right now)
• back then I did 2 or 3 steps in upgrading: 7.x -> 8.x -> 9.x / will check the upgrade procedure again on serverOLD asap. Maybe it's ok to do it directly, and even better
• in my test migration I "lost" the avatars. Maybe because I synced them after the upgrade run (checked forum entries etc). This time this will be one of my first checks. Right now I didn't get the avatars and icons rediscovered by jira-9.x (in my current test-VM).
• Upgrading all the addons will take quite some time

I try to prepare the new productive VM as far as possible, to minimize the migration time. I am quite sure I forgot to ask something ...

Any hints welcome here. 

Thanks in advance.

[Sachin Dhamale]

@Stefan Weichinger ,

Welcome to the Atlassian Community,

As per Description you want to migrate + upgrade you jira application

Refer this Doc for migration Purpose:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver0811/migrating-jira-applications-to-another-server-1019391252.html

For Avatar Issue - You need to make sure the home directory path is configured correctly 

First I would recommend migrate the Instance and then try to upgrade 

For Upgrade Path - 7.11 > 8.20 > 9.20 you can follow this path. Just refer the upgrade notes before upgrading it

Check the DB compactivity, Plugin Compactivity.

You need to have good CPU resources like RAM, Core etc.

Thanks,
Sachin

[Stefan Weichinger]

Thanks for the reply, for sure I already know the mentioned Doc.

It would be great to fix the avatar issue in the test env right now. AFAIK the home dir has not changed from OLD to NEW. Is there any step I can trigger to let it reload the pics? I rsynced the dirs "attachments" and "avatars" and checked permissions.

How to handle the addons? Upgrade them all at the 8.x step already? I assume this depends on the used addons ...

For the migration I plan to give the NEW VM lots of ressources and trim it down after things are done (8 vCPUs, 8 GB RAM now in TEST).

[Stefan Weichinger]

I think I managed to solve the avatars-issue. Did the default-setting for the home-dir change somewhere between 7.x and 9.x maybe?

Can I install and upgrade the new VM with the imported DB while the VM has a temporary installation FQDN? Or asked differently: is the base URL somehow relevant for the DB content?

I'd like to set up the new instance as something like `jira-mig.my.tld`, do all the necessary stuff and in the very end change the URL plus certs etc to the final URL.

[Stefan Weichinger]

Additional question: is it better to do the XML backup and restore it on the target machine, or is it equal to migrate the DB via pg_dump/pg_restore?