JIRA - Import old projects into an active instance without disrupting the active data

[David Volz]

Hello. We currently have an instance of JIRA v3.12.3 running on our network. We would like to upgrade to a newer version, but we've built quite a few custom plugins for some core projects that won't work properly in the newer version. That said, we are considering a second instance of JIRA on a different server on our network. We only have three projects that rely on the old plugins. Most of our project will work fine in the newer version.

So, our question is related to data migration. If possible, we would like to move all of our projects to a new instance of JIRA with the exception of the three projects that rely on the old plugins. This seems fairly straight forward as an an XML dump. Could we simply delete the three projects from the new instance after the import? And even more importantly, assuming that we are able to get the new instance running with most of our projects, could we import the three remaining projects into the new instance at a later date (after we rewrite our plugins)? Basically, is it possible to import old projects into an active instance without disrupting the active data.

On that note, are you able to export individual projects in the new versions of JIRA? Could we potentialy import all of our data into a new instance and then export the projects individually. If not, individual export would be a great feature

Thanks for your time.

[Dieter · Accepted solution]

missing plugins should not prevent a successful migration but it's very hard now to predict if the uprade will work flawlessly. There might be inconsistencies in the data that can make upgrade tasks fail, e.g. Duplicate entries in the propertyentry table. I guess this is something that ought to be discussed in separate questions. I just want to point out for you that upgrade to 5.0 from 3.x will not be possible. You would have to do this in two steps, e.g first upgrading to 4.4.3 then to 5.0. Now regarding the strategy regarding the delayed migration of the 3 core projects. I would not recommend to delete these projects in the new instance but to hide them using an empty permission scheme. This is because you loose all assignments of schemes, field configuration contexts, role members and other project related information if you delete the project. Instead i recommend to delete the issues only. When you have got your plugins running in the new instance you can either use Bob Swifts JCLI to export and import data or to restore the single projects from a XML Backup, which is the way with Atlassian toolsonly.There's a little drawback with the second solution since the backup must have been taken on an instance with the same version as your new instance. So to get around this you must first do another migration of your 3.12 instance to a temp instance which runs the same version as your new instance. Then take a XML backup of the temp instance and restore the three core projects to the new instance. JIRA just allows you restore single projects or a completer instance but backup is limited to a complete instance.

[David Volz]

Thanks for the responce! We're definily going to investigate using "Bob Swifts JCLI" to export data. And that is good to know about the v5 Upgrade requirements.

[Wojciech Seliga]

Feel free to split now your instance - you shouldn't face any problems later on when are ready to merge them back.

Your assumption is OK: you will be able to restore into the new JIRA everything from your current production XML dump and then you will just delete 3 projects (and perhaps some custom fields you these incompatible plugins have something to do with custom fields).

Later on, when you are ready with the plugins, just export the old instance to XML dump, but instead of restoring whole instance you will be able to use Project Import feature (available since 3.13 - http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/JIRA+3.13+Release+Notes - a.k.a Project Restore) which allows you to import into existing JIRA instance (without erasing it) only selected projects.

Even the current (4.4.x) version of JIRA does not allow exporting just individual projects - but that's not an issue. You are exporting everything, and then importing just selected ones.

[David Volz]

Excellent. The Project Restore feature is exactaly what we were hoping to find. We're testing this method in our lab and if all goes well, then we'll be migrating most of our data to the newer version soon. Thanks for your help!