I inherited Jira 7.2.4 Standalone installed on-prem. Is this DC or Server?

Question

TL; DR: Looking for upgrade path options.

Additional info:

* Build 72006
* Build Date 91606a849e49df24789f9d9a6614de45c98c37a8

We don't have support and haven't had it in years (i'm told).  In Admin > Support Tools > Instance Health we have 2 warnings:

* v7.2.4 is EOL
* MySQL 5.7.44 is unsupported

So I am looking to get us onto a supported version.  I am comfortable staying on-prem but I would like to move to cloud so i can wash my hands of it LOL.  We have quite a few user-installed add-ons and system add-ons; i don't know how much that complicates the upgrade path.  I am a Unix sysadmin, not a Jira admin, but I have admin'd one Jira or another for 10+ years at this point.  I inherited this one about a year ago.

Our Jira is running fine for now; I just migrated the installation from CentOS 7 to RockyLinux 9 (still running Java 8).  I have the ability to cleanly clone the whole env, database and all.  I am not opposed to cloning the env and seeing what upgrades to "Datacenter" i can get away with as far as "does Jira still work after the upgrade".

Sorry about the ramble; just wondering what to do.

Trudy P Claspill · Answer

Hello @Christian Smyth

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

Adding to the info provided by @Joe Pitt ...

First, to find out the license type you have and if/when it expired navigate to

- the gear icon near your avatar in the upper right corner

- select Applications

That will show you something like this that includes the expiration date and license type.

Since you say your Jira instance is still functional, it is a Server license. Data Center licenses cause the system to go into a read-only state when the license expires.

If you ultimately want to get to Jira Cloud you will need to upgrade.

First, there is an automated tool to support migrating the data, but the minimum Jira Version supported is 7.6.0. So you will have to get your Jira version upgraded to use the tool. You can only upgrade to versions that were released before your license expired. 7.6.0 was released Nov. 15, 2017

Second, if you want to use the newest version of the migration tool, it is only supported for Data Center licenses. So you would also need to get a Data Center license for your instance.

The next challenge that you may run into is that not all server apps are approved/supported for Data Center. So, you would need to review all your apps to determine if any will stop working because of the DC license.

Finally, not all plugins are supported in Cloud, so when you decide to try to migrate to Jira Cloud that is another analysis phase to execute. For any that are not supported you would need to determine if you still need the functionality, and if there is a Cloud-supported app to provide it.

For the apps on-prem that do have Cloud versions, the Cloud functionality may not be the same. The architecture of Cloud is different than on-prem; vendors are not installing their app code directly onto the Jira server and don't have direct access to the database. This limits what they can do in the Jira environment. So you would need to look at feature parity between the on-premise apps and the cloud apps.

And lastly, for those same apps, you need to investigate if their data can be automatically migrated from on-prem to the Jira Cloud instance. Not all apps provide automated migration paths. In some cases there may be a manual migration path where you can "export" the data from on-prem and "import" it to Cloud. In other cases you may have to recreate the data from scratch.

There is a ton of documentation online from Atlassian and others to help you through the Cloud migration process, if you want to try to do it yourselves.

However, given all the potential pitfalls and the age of your Jira version, you may want to consider engaging an Atlassian Solution Partner.

I work for such a partner. Praecipio is an Atlassian Platinum Solution partner. You can find us in Atlassian's Partner Directory and confirm we offer services in your geographic region. Cloud Migrations is one of the services in which we specialize, and we would be happy to discuss your scenario with you to see if working with us would be a good fit for you. We have team members who can advise you and/or execute the work for you, from the on-prem upgrade through the app and functionality analysis, and through the complete migration to Cloud.

Joe Pitt · Answer

To upgrade you'll need to go the Data Center or the cloud. The first thing you need to do is identify what plugins you have AND if they are supported/available when you upgrade.

server or DC

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-questions/How-I-can-check-if-the-Jira-instance-is-Jira-Server-or-Jira-Data/qaq-p/1845337

plugins

https://developer.atlassian.com/server/framework/atlassian-sdk/finding-your-plugin-in-the-host-application/