Migrate Configuration Only from Server to Cloud

[Gary Athaide]

We are moving from what is essentially a 10-user "sandbox" installation of Jira Server to the Cloud.  We have defined projects and workflows that we'd like to migrate upwards.  We do not want to migrate all the test/non-prod data that was put into the server instance.

Is there a way to move only the configuration files to the Cloud, without the detail data?  There are only 10 users defined so if we need to recreate them manually we can.

We tried experimenting with "Project Configurator for Jira" without success.  As a first step to trying that process, we exported our configuration, dropped our projects, and then tried to import the "configuration only" XML export.  However, after what appears to be a successful running the simulation migration, the migration itself just hangs as soon as it starts.

Any thoughts or recommendations?  Thank you.

[Brant Schroeder · Accepted solution]

@Gary Athaide 

If you do an import of your server instance then it will bring all of the projects, issues, config etc with it.  This is the only way I know of to import server to cloud.  So if you do not want any piece of that to come over you would need to clean it up in the server instance first.  If you have to do clean up you should just wait and do it in the cloud to ensure that everything actually migrated.  I would suggest just moving it all over and removing from the cloud instance what is not needed.

[Gary Athaide]

@Brant Schroeder 

Thank you.  After struggling to find a way to just export the project configuration (without the issues, etc.), we decided to take this approach of deleting everything from the server instance..  (As you stated, we could have also fully imported to the cloud and done the cleanup there.)   Since our server was essentially a sandbox, it was not a problem for us to to remove all issues in the server instance.

We created a new export of the 'scrubbed' version of our server projects, and then imported this version into the cloud.  From our initial review of the imported projects, it looks like everything we need is there.  A few minor tweaks to some UI settings and it looks like we're good to go.  (We did not reset the starting issue number in before exporting, but if it desired to restart the new cloud installation from issue 1, I did see step elsewhere in the community on how to do that.)

[Dylan]

Hi @Gary Athaide

If you reach out to our Migration Support team, they can enable a hidden feature that allows "Configuration only" migrations via the Jira Cloud Migration Assistant. 

Its not a common request so we haven't baked it into the UI natively yet, but we do provide it ad-hoc when required.

Sorry for the delay, but I hope it helps anyway. 

Cheers,

Dylan

[Dario B]

Hello @Gary Athaide ,

I might be a bit too late to the party but, for the future, you might want to check if the Jira Cloud Migration Assistant might fit your needs:

Please see below links for details and instructions:

• Test your server to cloud migration
• Use the Jira Cloud Migration Assistant to migrate
• What gets migrated with the Jira Cloud Migration Assistant
• How the Jira Cloud Migration Assistant links your data
• Supported versions for the Jira Cloud Migration Assistant

I hope this helps.

Cheers,
Dario

[Gary Athaide]

Thank you @Dario B .

I had started looking into the Migration Assistant, but from what I had read (at least to that point) about some of the migration utilities, it appeared that they migrated all the Issues from the Source DB.  That was the piece we were trying to exclude from the migration. Since we really didn't need anything but the projects and workflows we had had created, it turned out that just purging the Issues from the source DB was a process that suited our particular situation.

I will do more research on using the Jira Migration Assistant should we have to do anything like this in the future.  

[Dario B]

You are very welcome @Gary Athaide !

Just keep an eye on the migration assistant since new features are added quite often and, even if it might not fit your needs now, it might do it in the close future.

Cheers,
Dario

[Teodora V _Fun Inc_]

Hi @Gary Athaide 

You can try to work this around with the guide provided by Configuration Manager. Again, it has some amount of operations that need to be performed, but it may help. 

[Gary Athaide]

@Teodora V _Fun Inc_ 

Thank you for the feedback.  We did try to do this with another tool but kept getting hung up when trying to import the 'configuration only' extract back to our server instance.  Eventually we reached the point, as noted in my response to @Brant Schroeder, where we just decided to manually delete all the issues since the server instance had never reached the point of production implementation so it primarily a sandbox and only contained test data.

As it turned out, it took less time to simply clean out all the test issues than we had spent trying to get a 'configuration only' export to work.