Upgrade from JIRA 6.2.6 to 7.13

[Reed Wurts]

Currently, I have JIRA 6.2.6 and need to upgrade to 7.13.2 (and to 8.5 later). Current Prod is a Windows server 2008 Physical server and current Test is a VM. I will have 2 new VMs to work with. I am considering starting with a P2V of our Prod system, and then using that VM for upgrade to 6.4.  ... then 7.0.11, still on Windows Server 2008. We will then migrate the 7.0.11 to one of the new VMs with Windows Server 2012. And then, upgrade to 7.13.2.

Alternatively, we could perform an in-place upgrade of 6.2.6 to 6.4, and then do the P2V, or new install migration to the VM, and then follow with upgrade to 7.0.11, as above.

One concern is that we need to keep our Prod JIRA up during all the upgrade testing and can only have downtime for the final upgrade on the Prod VM.

Please advise.

[Gonchik Tsymzhitov]

Hi @Reed Wurts , 

Did you test the upgrade steps on test env? 

Please, checkout https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-questions/Upgrade-JIRA-from-6-0-1-to-higher-versions-7-8/qaq-p/1139437

And I do recommend to checkout the next article:

• https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver/upgrade-matrix-966063322.html
• https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver/upgrading-jira-applications-938846936.html

[Reed Wurts]

Yes, we tested, following the version-upgrade-path suggested by Atlassian: 6.4.2 > 6.4.6 > 7.0.11 > 7.6.17 > 7.13.8.  We first did a P2V - copy of our current prod system (Win2K8), upgraded it to 6.4.6.  I had 4 other VMs to work with for testing .. TestApp, FutureProdApp, and a dedicated DB server for each, all running Win2012. I did a fresh install of 6.4.6 on TestApp, copied the DB from the prior DB server to the new DB server, to get proper DB structure, and then did an XML import of the export from the 6.4.6 P2V Copy.  Next did the version upgrades on TestApp, 6.4.6 > 7.0.11 > 7.6.17 > 7.13.8, doing the DB and Custom Field configurations in the properties files, with most template and other customizations at the end, rather than at each version step. Finally, I  did a fresh install on the FutureProdApp, copied the DB from TestDB to ProdDB, and then did the XML export from TestApp and into FuturProdApp. Along the way, we learned that the Database Values utility was now part of the JSU Suite and no longer free, resolving our Close button issue after the purchase of the JSU. We have one remaining issue with a DB lookup in our Create form, where it does the lookup fine, pulling data from another app's DB server,.. and it stores the alpha-numeric ID in JIRA, such that it also renders the Name, ID and DOB in the field on the View and Edit screens, and it worked fine in the prior version, and versions during upgrade, and I thought I had it resolved, as we incremented the JTDS, JDBC and MS SQL drivers, and OS, JIRA and SQL DB versions... and now works EXCEPT FOR ONLY IDS with a leading Zero ...instead of displaying the data, it is displaying the formatting characters instead:  {1}, (2), {(0)}, DOB: (3) Sex (4) ....  which should be displaying the data: [lastname], [firstname], ([ID#[), DOB:[date], and Sex:[sex].  I also posted this issue in te Community Blog as "Field-lookup that pulls from another database is rendering improperly"  Please advise.