Requirement to copy /opt and /var directories during JIRA migration from one geo location to other

[Girish Shenoy]

Hi All,

We have planned migration of our JIRA instance from US to India. We use JIRA Software on-premise installation.

Ver: 7.13.8

we have /opt/atlassian, /var/atlassian/ and /var/attachment directory mounted on the JIRA server.

Since we have over 3.5. TB of attachment directory, we have decided to make attachment directory read-only form the application and do rsync from US to India NetApp filer.

However, not sure if we need to perform an rsync on /opt and /var directories as we are not making any config changes. Idea is to copy the /var and /opt storage flat into our India server and then start the services in India.

we have performed this in QA environment where we have taken /opt and /var backups from US and restored to India on a X date and copied the attachment directory on a Y date. when we turned on the service everything is working fine. just curious if we have to take backup of /var and /opt post shutdown of services in US and then migrate or we can migrate /opt and /var ahead of the cutover period to save some time. 

we have several GB of data in /var and /opt that we want to copy in advance. Any advice and recommendation is highly appreciated.

[Daniel Ebers]

Hi Girish,

this is indeed a interesting question as of the amount of data to be copied over.

I came across a few cases where the following plan promised success:

1. Copy over huge directories (presumable attachments, logs (if needed) from site A to site b) - rsync is a good tool for this job!
2. Shutdown the application during an announced/communicated maintenance window.
3. Do an incremental sync via rsync. Doing so not all the data has to be fetched during the maintenance window but only changed data since last sync.
4. Double check data consistency and settings
5. Bring up the application using data on site B.

Details, of course, may vary. This just depends on your deployment and infrastructure.

Cheers,
Daniel