How to migrate offline data center to the online data center?

[Pei Huang]

Summary: How to implement the ALM/ Jira architect to achieve offline data center interact to the online data center.

steps understanding:

1, There are two parts for ALM/ Jira architect, including online and offline data center.

2, Integrate Orca to offline data center and online data center to match field.

3, Migrate offline data center to online data center, the migration content including different fields.

Questions:

1, what's the migration method？

2，the feasibility for this Jira architect?

3, Any other details need to concern?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the community!

I'm afraid your question is not clear.  Your use of the words "online" and "offline" does not tell us what you have or what you are moving to.  A Jira system is always "online" - if it were "offline", you wouldn't be able to use it.

Do you mean that you have a Data Center install of Jira that you want to move from one server (or cluster) to another?  Or from a server you run to a Cloud server like AWS or Azure?  Or do you you mean you have a server/DC install that you would like to move to Atlassian Cloud?

Also, you haven't told us what "Orca" is?  I assume it's some form of computer system rather than a large sea mammal, but Atlassian have nothing by that name.

We can't really answer any of your questions until we're clear on what you are trying to do!

[Pei Huang]

Thanks for your suggestion.

there are two path about these questions:

1, Migrate data center (offline version) to Data center(with online server.)

Both are Data center, one of them is offline version, and the other is online version. I am not sure if it's ok to call them like this.

2, Migrate data center (offline version) to Cloud server like AWS.

For "Orca" is means Orca.security, it's Plug-in tool to achieve field match between data center offline to data center online. As we want to finish field match and then migrate the data from data center to the Data center(online)/ Cloud version.

Bty, because of the location are Singapore or Sydney. I am not sure if it's ok to use cloud version in China.

[Pei Huang]

For Data center setup, is it could be called offline Jira version if we set in local.

Besides, once we set the data center in the cloud like Baidu or Ali cloud, is it could be called online Jira version ? And then after configuration, does it allow users to check into the online version?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Ok, so there's some word usage to clarify here - offline means "not running or not available to use over the network", and online means "usable over the network".  They do not accurately describe what I think you are talking about here, I think you mean "on our servers, behind a firewall" when you say "offline", and "running on a server provided by someone else and available over the internet" for "online".

I'd suggest dropping those words completely, they don't mean anything like what you've been using them for.

Assuming those meanings are right, then you are talking about taking your Jira install from a server inside your network and moving it over to one hosted on AWS or similar service provider.

This is not a difficult thing to do.  The software you are running on your server is the same as what you will be running on the 3rd party servers.  Note that Jira has three different types of installation, called Server, Data Center and Atlassian Cloud.  Server and DC are the same software, but configured differently.

To "migrate" your server up to a Cloud provider, you have some options around data transfer you might want to think about, but the easiest migration is likely to be:

• Create a new database on the Cloud provider's service
• Set up the new Jira server on the provider, pointing it to the empty database
• Check it runs ok empty, then stop it while you do the actual migration
• Stop your current server
• Take a backup of the database and restore it into the Cloud database
• Copy the attachments from the server up to the Cloud installation
• Start the new Cloud service and run a full re-index
• If you're going for Data Center installs you will then need to start adding new nodes to the cluster.  But get the first node working first before you do that.

You'll also need to think about how you do user access - your new Cloud system will probably need to be connected to whatever identity system your server is currently using (unless it's just the simple off-the-shelf "internal Jira accounts" - those will come across as part of the data)

[Pei Huang]

Thanks for your reply.

Considering the feasibility for migration. the details please help to have a check:

1, is it available migration step if there are two Data Center install of Jira. For one Data center not available to use over the network, only can connect via VPN/VDI, while the other one can connect over network.

2,  "Take a backup of the database and restore it into the Cloud database"

 - what's the format about the database and how to restore it into the Cloud database.

3, " Copy the attachments from the server up to the Cloud installation"

 - What's the attachments, do you mean the whole database folder or the other things?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Ok, so,

1. Migration is not a step that has to use a network.  You could, if you wanted to, use removable media to get the data from one place to another.  Most people will use a network to do it though, as it is the easiest and usually fastest way to do it.  You probably can do this over your VPN, most VPNs support it and most people don't set up a VPN and then block file transfers.  

The point here is that your migration is going to need to be able to transfer files from your current server/dc to the new machine.  I can't tell you how best to do that on your setup.  You may need to talk to your system and network administrators about how to transfer (large and/or a lot of) files from old system to new.

2. I don't know.  It's not my system.  When you built it, you would have set up a database for it, and I can't know what that was.  Hopefully, it was one of the four supported ones (PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle or MS-SQL-server). 

The best way to transfer the database is to use the database's backup tool to get a copy which can then be restored to the target database server

3. No, just the attachment files - there's a directory under <Jira home> that is the root of the attachment storage, it is likely to be <Jira home>/attachments or <Jira home>/shared/attachments - a simple flat copy of all of the directories and files within there needs to go to the same place on your new server.

You can see the information you need for 2 and 3 in the system information page - it'll display the actual root of the attachments on your server and tell you what type of database you are using.

Note, also in question 1, you mentioned two systems.  This makes things more complex as you are probably thinking of merging them (not just a migration).  You will probably find it easier to do that separately - migrate one system first, then merge the other into it later.

[Pei Huang]

Thanks for your kindly support. It's very helpful.