Jira migration from 3.13 to Jira Cloud

Question

We have been using On-Premise Jira version 3.13 for over 15 years and are now planning to migrate to Jira Cloud. Since this version is no longer supported by Atlassian, there is no official migration tool available. Due to budget constraints, we are looking to handle the migration ourselves rather than using an Atlassian Premium Partner.

I was wondering if anyone could provide some guidance or best practices for this process?

nas_ghouri · Answer

Hi @Lucas Modzelewski _Lumo_  and @Gerusa Lobo many thanks for the responses with suggestions.

Yes, this is going to be something special! I’ll start planning the data migration, prioritizing what’s critical and what can be left behind.

So far, CSV import seems to be the most suitable option for us.

We’ll definitely need some luck!

Gerusa Lobo · Answer

Hi @Lucas Modzelewski _Lumo_ ,

The Jira 3.13 is so different that if you try to proceed the update to new versions you will need more that 10 jumps considering database, java and jira major updates, and it is possible have many things broken after that.

I Suggest you recreate the projects in cloud manually and proceed with a csv import of the issues for each project. I think it will be the best way and have the less impact of the end users.

I worked in a project to merge Jira 4 to 9.12 recently and we proceed in that way with success.

Also, If you have many projects to migrate, I recommend you contact an Atlassian partner to help you with this task.

Lucas Modzelewski _Lumo_ · Answer

Hi @nas_ghouri , welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Wow! I've been around since Jira 6.3.x, and I remember moving to 7.x was a big deal! So moving from 3.13… that’s going to be a completely new experience.

You’ll need to decide what data needs to be saved and what can be left behind. This is a great opportunity to rearrange processes and optimize your setup.

As for Migrations you can start here: https://www.atlassian.com/migration/assess

However, this guide likely won’t fully cover your case since Jira Server has been discontinued for a long time, and Atlassian’s support policy typically only covered about two years from a release date - meaning no one has likely tested a migration from such an old version. 
(Even the official Jira 3.13 documentation is gone! https://downloads.atlassian.com/software/jira/docs/v3.13/ )

So again, you’ll need to decide what needs to be preserved and which processes to keep. But in most cases, you’ll likely be starting from scratch. Just don’t remove your servers and databases in case you need to retrieve something later!

By the way, I asked ChatGPT about this version, and part of its response was:

Jira 3.13 is an extremely old version, released around 2008, long before Atlassian moved to Cloud and Data Center editions.

Good luck!