Confluence migration during an upgrade

[Leena Bakshi]

Hi,

I ll be upgrading Confluence soon and am in the staging  env right and ready to take a big leap with the major version upgrade.

Somehow I was in the impression Upgrading Jira and Confluence will be similar. However as I am going through the confluence upgrade documents(

https://confluence.atlassian.com/conf63/migrating-confluence-between-servers-929730056.html  ), it seems we dont do xml backup import in confluence, the way we do in Jira upgrade( if there is migration involved) .

Ou Scenario: 

Current confluence: 5.6.3 

O/S : windows 2008

DB: SQL 2012

Desired version to upgrade : 6.3.4

O/S : windows 2012 R2

 DB: SQL 2012

Since I ll be changing the operating system I was thinking to install conf 6.3.4 on windows 2012 and SQL 2012 db server.Stop confluence service on 6.3.4 and copy the application data from old confluence 5.6.3 to confluence 6.3.4 server and remove the confluence.cfg.xml file and start the confluence service on 6.3.4 version and according to my jira upgrade/migration process, it should prompt for database setup and thats when it should say  that import from the backup.

No,I have not attempted the above theory in practical so I dont know if thats how it goes. Has anyone done something similar in their environment?

Please note this is not and cannot be an In-place upgrade because I need to move to windows 2012 from windows 2008 on my application server.

Thanks

[Leena Bakshi · Accepted solution]

This issue has been resolved. I did the following:

Installed conf 5.6.3 on windows 2016

Copied the application data from old confluence server to windows 2016 server

Restored a copy of database to be used by windows 2016 confluence.

Did an inplace upgrade to confluence 6.3.4

Implemented SSL later 

now able to access confluence  6.3.4 on a new URL with the data still  being intact.

Thanks

[AnnWorley]

Thanks for the update with the clear steps - it should be helpful for the next administrator working on similar projects.

[AnnWorley]

Hi Leena,

My understanding of the steps you are suggesting is:

1. Install a clean Confluence 6.3.4 on a new server with a new database version
2. During the setup wizard, import the XML site backup from your Confluence 5.6.3 instance

I expect that the import would fail because the database schemas are too different between versions 5.6.3 and 6.3. Our Upgrading Confluence doc specifically mentions, "XML backups should not be used to upgrade Confluence."

The steps I recommend are:

1. Install Confluence 5.6.3 on the new system (no data)
2. Restore the site XML backup from the old instance
3. Shut down Confluence 5.6.3
4. Run the installer for 6.3.4 and choose upgrade

I look forward to any questions as you plan this migration.

Cheers,

Ann

[Leena Bakshi]

Thank you Ann. I Appreciate your prompt reply.

You answered my doubt that there is no XML restore involved here because of different confluence version. So I wont attempt that. However I am still confused and seeking answer on how to restore the database? ( Please note I understand your suggestion) what you suggested is to migrate the current setup of confluence 5.6.3 to another server with windows 2012 R2 and THEN DO the in place upgrade to conf 6.3.4? However I am trying to use a different approach...unless this approach has flaws and you know that it does nt work :) 

I have installed conf  6.3.4 on my staging server last evening and I am only confused in the part where when I copy the application data from conf 5.6.3, how will I upgrade the database? Do I restore conf 5.6.3 database on a different database server and change the pointer in confluence.cfg.xml file and then restart the confluence service on 6.3.4 server?And then both the application and database will be upgraded? OR is there any step or info that I am missing?

Thank you

[AnnWorley]

The existing database that was built by Confluence 5.6.3 must undergo several schema changes before Confluence 6.3.4 will run on it. The upgrade tasks must run against it to make these changes. In order to upgrade you have to have a functioning copy of your old instance, which contains your data, and start the new version using the home directory of the old version. You may use the installer and choose upgrade or you may copy the Confluence 6.3.4 archive to your server and edit confluence-init.properties to point at the old home directory. The new version checks confluence.cfg.xml for the version and if it is older than 6.3.4, that launches quite a few upgrade tasks.

Please do review our docs, as I am only giving the high-level overview here. Upgrading to 6.x necessitates some infrastructure changes so you may need to coordinate with other teams. Please see: Upgrading Confluence and Confluence 6.3 Upgrade Notes

[Leena Bakshi]

Thanks .. I ll be doing the first suggestion of yours then. and if face any issue will open support ticket.

Thanks for all your help! :)

[AnnWorley]

My pleasure. Support tickets are great too, but I hope you will also continue coming back to our forum; we are always happy to help, and interested in solving issues,

Have a great weekend!

[Leena Bakshi]

Hi Ann,

How long is conlfuence backup suppose to take.. I know its not a recommended way but when I started backyup from the application to get the XMl file , it is running from last 1 hr and ,my db is 13 G and db server and app server are separate. 

Thanks

[Leena Bakshi]

It took 5 hrs for the xml backup to complete and even though the database was 13 G, the xml backup was 50G. I am now in the process of "Upload and restore a site/space backup".

[AnnWorley]

Hi Leena,

If you included attachments in the backup, that explains why the backup was bigger than the database. In most cases the attachments are stored on the file system.

Did the restore finish successfully?

Thanks,

Ann

[Leena Bakshi]

Hi Ann,

Restore from XML without attachment did finish and it did show some spaces afterwards however I couldnt login to confluence with the local admin credentials. So I chucked the whole approach and went with my  instinct and successfully migrated Confluence from win 2008 to win 2012 R2. and Infact after that I completed in-place upgrade to 6.3.4 which was surprisingly so straight forward and easy that I am still trying to find problems :) ;). 

so far I couldnt find much other than 3000 updates that are stuck in the content queue and flushing them is not making any difference, So far I have rebooted the server twice and no luck still exact same no in content queue. now after doing it third time the tasks got reduced to half ..

Would you be able to confirm if atlassian support confluence on windows 2016?

Thanks

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I assume you mean MS-SQL 2016.  The answer is "no", that is not supported.  See https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/supported-platforms-207488198.html

[Leena Bakshi]

Actually I did mean windows 2016 only because even though supported platform say all supported Microsoft Windows but many users that I have spoken to are still on windows 2012 server. 

Sql 2016 I knew and that’s why completely chucked the idea of migrating db on that version. 

[Padmasree P]

Hi Leena,

I have a similar scenario, where I have to migrate the server and upgrade the confluence in Linux environment.need your assistance in plugin migration. how do we do migrate and upgrade the plugins. please share your inputs as I'm completely new to Jira and confluence.