Upgrading Confluence 5.5 Recommendations

Question

We need to upgrade Confluence 5.5 to the latest stable version of Confluence. We are looking for suggestions on the best way to do this. Should we just:

1. Stop Confluence
2. Take a backup of the database
3. Download the Confluence 6 executable
4. Run the upgrade
5. Restart Confluence

What about plugins? What other gotcha's should we be watching out for?

Thanks,

Mike Farrell

Thomas Buchhorn · Answer

As Boris said, always do a test upgrade on a staging server.

You can check if compatible upgrades to your plugins are available for the new confluence version in the add-on manager.

Check if you need to buy a licence. Sometimes plugins change from a free version to a non-free version.

Check your system environment: Do you need java upgrades, database upgrades, etc? Check the End of support announcements / upgrade guides of each confluence version you skip.

The configuration of the connector parameters might have changed. Check if the parameters are still valid.

Boris Berenberg - Atlas Authority · Answer

Test it in staging. You can even do it on your computer. Doing this live in prod without testing is a huge risk.