Jira Projects migration from Server to Datacenter

Soumya Subudhi

Hello,

Our team is planning to migrate Jira projects from one server to another data center. I want to know what is the best way to migrate the projects with out any configuration/data/history loss.

Please let me know if any one has the best solution.

Customer is not ready to buy any plugin for this activity.

Radek Dostál

Without any plugin, if you want to do this out of box, it's going to be painful, depending on how customized and how many projects you have.

 

Out of box, you would create an application data backup (xml), which you then need to move to your destination such as jira_home/import/my_backup.zip

This xml backup does not contain attachments, so you also need to either zip up the attachments folder from source and unzip it in destination, or symlink it if you're able to, this needs to be jira_home/import/attachments; in the exact same format and structure as on source (because attachment references in the .xml contain the path to the attachment).

 

Additionally, when you are restoring projects from the backup, it only restores issue data - meaning the project must already be configured and set up with all the appropriate schemes such as workflows, custom fields, in order for the project data to be restored.

 

All that said, it is of course hugely recommended to first try this out on a separate testing environment. Imports don't generally cause problems, but if it dies from memory or throws some kind of an exception, it can leave you leftover data after a failed import which could be difficult to clean up, so being able to test this first on a non-production instance can save you a lot of headache and potential downtime to clean up production with sql.

 

You should also brace yourself for other bugs which you may have to fix in your backup - this could be anything from 4byte characters, to wrong data format of version picker values, to wrong timestamp formats, to duplicate users, to bugged out issue history, to anything else. If it's a relatively fresh or small instance, you probably would not need to do any ad hoc fixes, but with old and large instances it's more often than not the case.

 

My best experience is with using https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1211147/project-configurator-for-jira?hosting=datacenter&tab=overview which generates a smaller backup file, and does include configuration, so you don't have to waste time on manually setting everything up. It also has it's caveats if your instances are configured differently, but it eases things up a lot. However, from what I remember it does not allow you to import projects on an evaluation license (unless I am mistaken and/or it changed). There may however be other apps that do support imports with evaluation, if your migration activity will not span over more than a few months.

 

If you only need to do a handful of projects, you should be fine without plugins when you get the hang of it, but if you are migrating many projects it's horror.

 

The official documentation covers above in some detail, such as what files need to be moved where: https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver/restoring-a-project-from-backup-938847691.html

 

And of course, the disclaimer that both instances must be the same version, you must have the same plugin versions too, etc., good to check with that document there, but if anything is misaligned Jira will be quick to let you know and not allow you to continue importing so no biggies if you miss something.

 

Just to say from experience, if you've never migrated projects between instances it could be get a bit sweaty to start up, but it can be done with some patience.