Is it possible to restore a Jira Software instance without data (issues)?

[Erik Ellingsson]

Hi,

Today we have Jira Software (Server) instances in highly regulated production environments which we would like to restore to a test environment once or twice per year. Since we would like to restore all projects with their settings and configurations but not the actual data (issues) we are today limited to the following procedure:

1. Restore instance to a new (temporary) instance also residing in the highly regulated environment
2. Startup the temporary instance (blocking fetching/sending of email etc.)
3. Bulk delete all issues from the temporary instance (cumbersome due to number of projects and issues in the instance)
4. Create a new backup of the temporary instance (now cleansed)
5. Move the backup file from the temporary instance to the test environment
6. Restore the test environment based on the "cleansed" backup file
7. Wipe the temporary instance used to create the backup file.

Of course it would be best (for us) if there was a checkbox on the "Backup Jira data" admin page allowing an option such as "Exclude issues from backup" to get a portable backup file without any issues which we easily could use use to restore to a test environment. But unfortunately no such option exists today.

Are there any other known methods and/or apps to simplify the process described above for exporting/importing Jira Software instances without actual data (issues) but with all other settings intact?

[Hernan Halabi - Elite IT Consulting Group · Accepted solution]

Hello @Erik Ellingsson take a look to this. If this works as it says you might not need to delete all the data and will avoid several steps.

https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver085/anonymising-jira-application-data-981155544.html

[Erik Ellingsson]

Thanks for the suggestion @Hernan Halabi - Elite IT Consulting Group I will have a look at it. The only thing I'm worried about is that it won't be able to anonymize all of the contents, but It looks like an interesting approach :-)