Upgrading and moving JIRA from version 6.4.2 to 8.1.0

[Berndt Johansson]

Hi

We have an aging on-premise installation of Jira 6.4.2. Now looking to both upgrade and move the server instance to new hardware. 

What would be the best procedure?

Can I install a new server instance and make a backup from the 6.4.2 version and restore the backup on the 8.1.0 version? Would be nice but I can certainly understand that that would be tricky... :-) 

/Berndt

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

Since before Jira 6, the best upgrade procedure has been to do it "in place", not backup and restore via export/import.  You can still do it this way, but it is not the recommended way.

I would clone your 6.4.2 system to a new system (so your current system acts as an instant "roll back"), and then run the installers to take it in steps through 7.0, 7.13 and then 8.1

Note that if you did export/import, you must still go through the intermediate versions, especially the 6.4 to 7.0 - there are data conversions that need to be done on a 6.4 system that cause problems in later versions if you try to skip 6.4 to 7.0

Have a read of https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver/upgrading-jira-applications-938846936.html before doing anything else!

[Berndt Johansson]

Sounds like a good plan. I'll try that.

/Berndt

[Ranjit Vadakkan]

Hi Berndt,

How did your upgrade go? I'm in the same boat, so any tips/feedback would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Ranjit

[Berndt Johansson]

Hi Ranjit

It worked just fine. I did go through the intermediary version as suggested above and made sure that I was working on the clone, then the upgrade went just as planned with no problems at all.

So my tip would be to follow the recommendation above.

/Berndt

[Eloi Serret Ballart]

Hi Berndt / Nic,

I'm on the same way and I will follow your steps, but I have one question. For every update is required to adapt all Plugins and Scripts for each version? I mean we have a lot of groovy scripts that we will need to modify to the compatible version of groovy language for Jira 7 for first upgrade, and then modify it again to make it compatible with Jira 8? And the same with Plugins, is needed to upgrade all Plugins to a version compatible with intermediate version or is posible to wait for upgrade plugins when we were on latest version?

I hope to have explain well haha.

Regards!
Eloi.

[Berndt Johansson]

Hi Eloi

It was quite some time ago now and we don't have a lot of plug-ins to consider in our installation so I actually only updated these once I got to the final version and that worked our fine in our case. 

Best regards

Berndt

[Covance Genomics Lab System Support]

We have JIRA version 6.3.9. Is the procedure the same as above? Or do we have to do an extra step to first upgrade to 6.4.x?

Don

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Technically, yes, you should upgrade to 6.4 first, but a lot of people have reported 6.3 to 7.0 working fine (including me, several times).  Test it first of course, don't dive into a production upgrade until you are confident that it is safe.

[Covance Genomics Lab System Support]

We need to decide whether to upgrade to 8.13 (Long Term Support)  or to the most recent 8.15.  In either case, to upgrade from 6.3.9, I presume we do it in these steps:  to 7.0, 7.13, 8.1, then 8.13 (or 8.15).    Are they the correct steps or can I skip directly from 7.13 to 8.13 (or 8.15) and skip 8.1?   I will skip doing 6.4.  Thank you.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I'd tend to recommend sticking with an LTS version, simply because you'll be able to upgrade it more easily if there are critical bugs, and retain support, for, well, longer.

8.1 -> 8.anything is a good upgrade, there's no need to worry about that bit.

You might be able to go 7.13 to 8.13/15 directly.  I've had plenty of success with 7.13 to 8.5 (the previous LTS), and I wouldn't expect problems with a jump to 8.anything really.  But, as usual, test it carefully before committing to production.

[Covance Genomics Lab System Support]

Likewise, would it be safe to upgrade JIRA Server from 7.13.18 directly to 8.13.20?  Or is it better to go first to, say, 8.13.5?   In test, we successfully upgraded from 7.13.18 to 8.13.5 and from there to 8.13.20; we're wondering whether we can skip 8.13.5 when we do the production upgrade.