Update data from old to new serve (after migration) (bitbucket and jira)

Question

Hello,

We've been using Bitbucket and jiira for quite a while now and we recently switched to a new server and already migrated all of the data that was available during the migration but the new server wasn't operational yet so we continued to use the old server after the migration was done so there is some new commits on the old server.

If i just update the database and keep all the setup as is will it work or is there some stuff i have to copy from jira/bitbucket home directories?

thanks

Some Guy_y2sybu · Answer

Yeah i actually had to check what are the modification between the two and noticed a data folder so copied it along with the database dump and it worked. Like how easy atlassian products are.

Andy Heinzer · Answer

I can speak to the Jira side of things:

The biggest problem I see with this scenario is that Jira's Home folder contains all the flat files where Jira stores attachments and avatars.   So while you can restore the database from the other instance here to upgrade that data, depending on which versions of Jira the upgrade is moving between, you might need to actually have the contents of that $JIRAHOME/data/ folder and subfolders in place on the destination system BEFORE you actually restore the database from test to production.

There are some versions of Jira that utilize upgradetasks that can change the filename convention used for attachments and avatars.  These upgrade tasks are only run when Jira is first started up and connected to a database that contains Jira data from an older version.  If the flat file attachments are not in place when the upgrade happens, Jira can change the filenames in the database, but because it cannot see/read the existing files the filesystem, it is unable to rename these files accordingly.  As such if you do these steps out of order, it is possible that some of these attachments could end up in a broke state where Jira cannot see them or serve up their content.

The other difference is in regards to the $JIRAHOME/plugins/ folder.  This stores all the plugins your Jira instances uses.  When upgrading versions of Jira, I actually don't recommend copying this subfolder immediately in all cases.  Sometimes it's fine, but for major versions upgrades like Jira 6.x to 7.0, we know that so much changed in the plugin architecture of Jira that just about all of these plugins need upgrades in order to load and trying to load older incorrect versions in newer Jira versions can cause Jira to fail to start up in some cases.

I would recommend following the steps in Migrating Jira applications to another server.  https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver071/migrating-jira-applications-to-another-server-802592269.html

Alexis Robert · Answer

Hello,

for JIRA you will only need to update the database and any attached file that was created since you switched as well.

The home directory contains the plugins as well, so make sure that you have not installed any new plugins on the old instance.

Cheers,

-- Alexis