Streamlining Data Migrations & Discontinuing Site Import

[#1]

TL;DR 

Atlassian is replacing Site Import with migrate-data-all-at-once offering customers a more robust solution to improve the migration experience for customers. This will also mark the start of the discontinuation of Site Import in favor of migrate-data-all-at-once.

What do I need to know?

• The migrate-all-data-at-once feature will go into GA in JCMA 1.9.2, and we plan to discontinue Site Import for server-to-cloud migrations in November 2023. These changes will smooth and streamline migrating your data from Server or Data Center to Cloud.

• If you’re currently migrating, you’ll want to determine whether our plan to discontinue Site Import will impact your existing migration plans.

• If you’re considering migrating and your migration to Cloud needs bulk data capabilities, use JCMA’s migrate-all-data-at-once feature from the get-go. We don't recommend building plans around Site Import.

With Server End of Support (EoS) less than nine months away and the average migration taking 9+ months from start to finish, it’s more important than ever to start your migration journey today. If you haven’t already, we strongly advise you take advantage of our Cloud Migration Trials, a risk-free way to explore and assess the value of Cloud for up to 12 months.

For those of you who’ve already begun your journey, we know that you can’t harness the value of Cloud if you can’t get there. That’s why we are continuing to improve and optimize our migration tooling to simplify your migration experience

What is migrate-data-all-at-once?

We heard directly from migrators that to make migrating easier, you needed a smoother experience that simplifies migrating data. That’s why, last year, we added the ability to migrate all data at once in the Jira Cloud Migration Assistants (JCMA). At it’s core, this allowed customers to migrate data in bulk, similar to Site Import. However, migrate-all-data-at-once is more reliable and robust, with additional features such as proactive scanning, which identifies errors before you migrate, and automation to rectify issues without any manual intervention.

We’re excited to announce that after a successful customer validation program, we have decided to release migrate-all-data-at-once to all customers and discontinue Site Import in favor of migrate-data-all-at-once to provide a more seamless and reliable migration experience.

How is JCMA’s migrate-all-data-at-once feature different from Site Import?

JCMA’s migrate-all-data-at-once feature is functionally equivalent to Site Import. It allows more complex customers with large data volumes to migrate their data from their self-managed instances to the cloud. However, Site Import is not functionally equivalent to JCMA’s migrate-all-data-at-once feature, which gives customers the following:

• a simplified migration tooling experience regardless of migration strategy, i.e., lift-and-shift or project-by-project.

• access to better guardrails, for example, pre-flight checks, email deduplication, automated intervention, etc…

• From JCMA 1.9.4, migrating all data at once supports app migrations. However, apps containing app-specific custom fields or workflow rules are not supported in this version. Starting with JCMA 1.9.17, app workflow rules and custom fields are compatible when migrating all data at once.

For more information on this new capability, please visit the Atlassian Support documentation or refer to the FAQs below.

What’s the timeline for migrate-all-data-at-once general availability and discontinuing Site Import?

The ability to migrate all data at once in the JCMA will be available in version 1.9.2. of JCMA, which is planned to be released on May 18th, 2023.

In November 2023, we’ll discontinue Site Import for server-to-cloud migrations. There will be a six-month transition period, from June 1st, 2023 to November 30th, 2023, where Site Import will be accessible to customers and Solution Partners but will not be available after November 30th, 2023.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What if my current migration plan is using Site Import?

If your existing migration plan uses Site Import, we recommend that you assess whether or not you have a high degree of confidence that you can migrate before November 30th, 2023.

Are there any plans to add migrate-all-data-at-once to CCMA or BBCMA?

We currently don't have any plans to introduce this feature into CCMA or BBCMA.

[Kristin Lyons]

Does this include Enterprise organizations as well?

[Branimir Kain]

@Kristin Lyons Yup, migrate-data-all-at-once can be used by all customers. The only reason you'd want to leverage Site Import over migrate-data-all-at-once is really timing.  If you're already testing your migration with Site Import we understand it'd be unreasonable to forgo testing and restart testing with a new feature.  In almost all other cases, I'd recommend using the CMAs for Project-by-project or migrate-data-all-at-once.

[Nino Enukidze]

Hello,

Great article!

In case, you want to migrate assets (formerly insight) from Server or DC to the cloud instance, you can use our assets migration tool. For more information you can reach out to our article: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Service-Management/How-can-Assets-be-migrated-from-Jira-Data-Center-to-Cloud-or/td-p/2382324

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact us.

Thank you!

[Dave Long]

Does Confluence have similar migration options, or does the above article just apply to JIRA? 

[Branimir Kain]

@Dave Long, this feature does not exist for CCMA. However, this is mainly due to CCMA's current performance capabilities, which enable you to migrate all your data using CCMA's current Space-by-Space selector. You can select all the spaces and then migrate it over.

[Andre Stewart]

is there a way to leverage this without connecting the server instance to the jira marketplace?