JIRA Server Update from 6.4.7

Question

Hi, I've been tasked with research regarding to update JIRA Server in our company.

Our license expired quite a while ago. Maintenance period ended 2019-02-21

So I have few questions:

1. I've read that server licenses cannot be bought. Should we renew with Data Center license?

2. Since maintenance period ended on 2019-02-21 it means that I can install the newest version before this date without renewing a license, right? That would be 8.0.0

3. In my research I found out that when upgrading from oneversion to another there are versions I shouldn't skip. Is there a faster way to check which are mandatory in this case than going through patch notes one by one?

4. What is required of us to migrate our server JIRA to cloud? Do we need to have active license and which version is sufficient for that?

KAGITHALA BABU ANVESH_z1zl10 · Accepted Answer

Hello @Mateusz Kloc ,

Raising a new quote a new Jira Server is closed.

You already have an existing Jira, But maintenance is closed.

You can request a quote for maintenance with the existing user tier.

you can try to contact "my.atlasia.com" with your billing account.

These people may help you.

https://www.atlassian.com/licensing/cloud-loyalty-discounts

Thanks.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted Answer

So....

No.  See Q2

Yes, you can upgrade to any version released before the end-date of your licence

Your research is right, there is at least one version you should not skip - 7.0.  7.1+ have "refactored" some of the upgrade code and it's a bit broken, it can render your data incompatible with cloud migrations and breaks things like priority schemes in later versions.  The minimum steps I would take with your version is 6.4 -> 7.0 -> 8.0.  But, I would very strongly recommend you actually go 6.4 -> 7.0 -> 7.13 -> 8.0

There are four routes to Cloud from Server

* export/import* Requires server to be on a very recent version.  At this time, I wouldn't bother trying it from any version lower than the current long-term-support (8.13) and I'd prefer to do it from 8.18 (latest)

* JCMA* Requires your server to be on at least 7.6 and the higher, the better.  So in your case, I'd take it up to at least 7.13 before looking at JCMA.  Not sure I'd go to the trouble of 7.13 -> 8.0 as the improvements are not really significant in terms of migrations.

* Rolling your own* Often partially uses one or both of the two above, plus a whole pile of other processes fitted around your data and desired usage

* Migrate your teams not your data* Essentially, start with an empty Cloud system, get some projects set up the way you would like to be working with them, and then tell your teams to stop using their old system and move to the Cloud (keep server running for a reference to old issues and active to close out any outstanding ones, but create nothing new).   You'll probably meet less resistance than you think, especially if you can engage the teams with building the new projects to suit them better, although you will probably get "can we at least import the basics of the open issues in our server projects" (a simple CSV export/import is usually good enough!)