Server migration from self hosted to self hosted questions?

[AnotherJiraServerAdmin]

Hi Everyone.

I'm new here so sorry if this is asked a lot.

We just increased our user licenses for technician access to Jira because next month we're rolling out Jira as a service tool; and employees submitting tickets will jump by about 4000. Our current helpdesk team has done some amazing work with configurations and automation. However, the server Jira is installed on here has issues and we want to deploy a new server (VM) with a fresh Jira install.

Current:
-Jira Production and Jira Sandbox share ONE server
-SQL databases on separate server from Jira servers
-Confluence is on a 3rd separate server
Planned:
-Spin up brand new VM
-Install Jira Server (run production from here)
-Old server: Production service is turned off and only runs sandbox
-SQL databases stay separate
-Confluence stays separate

Plan (in no particular order - please advise):
-Spin up new VM
-Install Jira
-Install Add-ons
-Link to SQL databases
-Manually move software licenses from old to new
-Configure networking an IIS
-Configure AD sync

We think that's the basics of it. But our major question is, are most configuration and automation settings stored on the SQL databases? The folks here have been pouring months into the servers here (production and sandbox). They have new automation and configurations currently on the production server ready to roll but they're hidden until the roll out. When Jira goes live company wide they just need to hide some configurations from our current ServiceDesk and unhide all the new configurations.

We understand some settings and configurations will have to be set on the server itself but we're hoping that list is very small and that the months of work our team put in is primarily on SQL and is more a matter of just linking up the SQL database to the new install? Can someone maybe offer some insight on this?

The difficult thing here is the employees who installed our original server are all gone and they didn't leave any documentation. So the employee who'll be going through this process (me) has very little Jira experience so I'm sorry in advance if I ask very basic questions. I honestly don't know.

[Nirmani Kalakheti]

@AnotherJiraServerAdmin

I have gone through just like you. I would do all of the above in a test environment before moving to prod. You can drop your contact info in text format and I will try to guide you. You can always edit (delete the contact info) your answer here. 

[Sivarama Krishna K]

If you are using only JIRA with no special Add-On, then you can use backup from JIRA and Export using JIRA System Configuration.

JIRA Default Export and import is excludes Plug-In data. It happened to me with Zephyr plug-in. By the time I realized it is a week over. So, not able to revert data.

On recent upgrade, I used the following method.

-Spin up new VM
-Install Jira
-Install Add-ons

-- Configure JIRA System with Local DATABASE

-- Make sure the system works fine with all add-ons.

-- Shutdown or Stop JIRA Service

-Link to SQL databases (Copy config file from old system)

-- Take Licence Key from existing system and update in new system (make sure the old system disabled ASAP to follow the Licence rules)

-Configure AD sync

It worked for me. Not found any data loss this time.

[Ravi Sagar _Sparxsys_]

Hi @AnotherJiraServerAdmin 

Well when you restore/migrate Jira to a fresh instance/server. It will restore everything from configurations and data to customisations.

This page has good information on this topic. You can use your existing database as well.

Since you have already done lot of work and it seems this piece of work is critical for your organisation. I suggest you hire an Atlassian expert to look at your current setup and either advise or perform the migration for you. They can guide you with the best approach to minimise disruption for your users. If you want to do it yourself, go through the documentation link I shared above thoroughly and attempt to do the migration on a test server, identify problems, their workarounds and prepare a runbook.

I hope it helps.

Ravi

[AnotherJiraServerAdmin]

Thank you @Ravi Sagar _Sparxsys_ 

We're looking at upgrading our service contract by end of year, or early next, so for now it looks like it'll be me and Jira's free support tier. I've reached out to them with the same questions I asked here. Time is of the essence for this so I think we'll proceed like you're saying with a test server but if everything works out that test server will automatically become the new production server. Planning for this has been in the works for months but my department wasn't given approval to spin up a new VM until recently.

I really appreciate the help so far! A few questions the link you shared:

1. "To migrate Jira to a new server or location, you'll need to install a new Jira instance. Once you've completed the installation, you'll migrate your existing data between the databases, and then move your home directory and all existing customizations."

Does that mean that there are a lot of customization's stored locally (outside SQL)? Like Projects, and UI's etc? With this install we wanted to setup the server from scratch but keep customizations. The "Re-apply any modifications" section in your doc is what I mean :)

We'd like to:

Start new configurations for web.xml, cacerts, setenv.sh, server.xml, service.bat etc. We just want the install to be fresh but be able to use all customization for projects, boards, etc. There's a lot of automation running on our server, is that on SQL or local?

2. "On the next screen, click Import your data, and select the file with your XML backup."

I see that the link says the XML backup is the database and the Data folder. Is it trying to make a copy of our SQL database in XML format? I'm not sure I follow what the document means here. Our database would be massive. 

Thanks agian

[AnotherJiraServerAdmin]

Also, after looking around I found:

"Restoring a project from backup"

https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver/restoring-a-project-from-backup-938847691.html

It's a large document. Is this something we'd have to complete for every project? Our SQL database would remain unchanged and we're just looking to redirect to database to the new install. Aren't all these projects here? If all of our software versions and add-on versions match in both servers we should be okay right?

[pilloom]

What about a license, key, how can i migrate from old server to new server?