I have 2 instances of JIRA. One instance of JIRA is v6.4.7 which is present in the PROD environment of my company. Another instance of JIRA is v6.3.7 which is present in the DEVELOPMENT environment of my company.Questions are in the description box-

[Adnan]

I have 2 instances of JIRA in my company. One instance of JIRA is v6.4.7 which is present in the PROD environment of my company. Another instance of JIRA is v6.3.7 which is present in the DEVELOPMENT environment of my company.
Basically we are going to upgrade to the latest version of JIRA(7.3.x) in the PROD environment, but before doing so we want to test it in the DEV environment.
Right now DEV env has to upgraded to v6.4.7 (similiar to PROD env) from v6.3.7.

1) Please explain me the steps to be followed to make my DEV environment run the same way as my PROD environment.
Along with that I need all the data in PROD environment to be copied to DEV environment.Please explain me  all that.
PLEASE HELP ME OUT WITH ALL THE STEPS .
THANK YOU 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

1. https://confluence.atlassian.com/jira064/upgrading-jira-720411839.html
2. Backup/restore - assuming you have a working dev environment, but with old, or no, data
3. For a small/medium JIRA, export the data from Production to xml and import it into Dev.  For a larger one, use a copy of the database
   
   1. I'd change the dev system's email to turn it off (command line switches in the setenv.sh)
   2. Copy the attachments directory under <JIRA home> to the dev box
   3. Start it and change the base url to the test one

[Adnan]

Thanks for the reply Nic.
I need clarity on how to upgrade.
1)I mean do we need a license key to upgrade from v6.3.7 to v6.4.7 in my DEV server. Is there some license key that we need to get? Please guide me here
2)after upgrading my DEV server JIRA to 6.4.7, the next step I follow is that ,  I will take a backup of my data from  PROD server . Correct?
The backup is in a ZIP format isn't it? 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

1) An Atlassian licence gives you the right to upgrade to any version released before the end of the licence term.  If your licence is valid now, you can use anything from 4.0 to 7.3 (4.0 because the licence format changes)

2) Yes.

.Zip is just a compression container, the data inside it is xml.

[rachna]

Hey Nic, (Adnan here)
I successfully upgraded to 6.4.7 in my DEV server.
Now I want to move the PROD server data to my DEV server.
Can you tell me the steps to follow?
I believe that I must take backup of PROD data....this will be in ZIP format.I want to know how to transfer that ZIP file from 1 server to another....Will a simple copy paste do?
Another question is that, once I get the backup data in my DEV server, I just import it right? Can you elaborate on this?   

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

You can use any method you want to copy a file from one server to another.

You can put the .zip file in the <JIRA home>/import directory and tell JIRA it's name to import it.  It will do the unzip work for you, there's no need to decompress it.

[rachna]

Hey Nic,
HUGE PROBLEM!!!!
I recently downloaded the JIRA software 7.3.3 and wanted to update it from JIRA 6.4.7...Problem is that I've used the installer and installed the v7.3.3..and when I launched it in browser, it stated that 

"JIRA access problem
There is a problem with your JIRA access.
Description Time Level Exception
Failed to start due to problems with your database configuration. HSQL is no longer supported.
In order to migrate your HSQL database to supported H2 database, please run JIRA 7.0 which will trigger migration procedure."

What on earth do I do now?
How do I downgrade back to 6.4.7?
Whats the procedure to upgrade to the latest version with the new internal db attached ...I mean from hsqldb to h2db ?.......PLEASE HELP!!!

 JIRA error.jpg

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

You should not be using HSQL or H2 as production databases, they simply are not supported.

You should not have upgraded to 7.3, as the documentation states you should go from 6.4 to 7.0 (there is a discussion to be had about what you can get away with when upgrading, but one of the baseline assumptions there is that you're using a supported database)

There is no sane way to downgrade a JIRA.

Your only useful option here is to go find the backup you took before attempting the upgrade. 

Restore that, test it, then migrate to a supported database and restart your upgrade testing.