JIRA Upgrade: Which Interim Versions?

[Brian Uri]

Hello,

I am planning an upgrade from JIRA 4.1.2 to JIRA 6.0.7 and am trying to reconcile conflicting information about which interim versions (if any) I need to hit along the way. I have read the Release Notes and Upgrade Notes for each major.minor.patch version.

I presume that one of these paths will be the preferred path:

1. Manual upgrade directly to 6.0.7.
2. Manual upgrade to some interim version, then rapid upgrade to 6.0.7.
3. Rapid upgrade directly to 6.0.7.

This link seems to suggest that Rapid Upgrade was first offered in 4.3, so I should do a manual upgrade to that, and then do a rapid upgrade. This link states that I need to get up to 5.2 first. At least one other Atlassian page stated that I should manual upgrade to 4.4 first, but I unfortunately neglected to bookmark it. Some non-authoritative forum posts suggested that rapid upgrade was possible from any 4.x version.

Any information about the officially "blessed" way to get from 4.1.2 to 6.0 would be appreciated.

Thanks!
BU

[LucasA · Accepted solution]

Hi Brian,

JIRA 4.1 can't be upgraded straight for 6. You'll need to upgrade it first for 4.3 or 4.4 -- please use 4.4.5 instead of 4.3.x for doing so. The reason of that is lots of changes on the user management and settings. JIRA 4.4.5 can be upgraded for 6.0.x as it is.

Also check if you have any plugin being used into your JIRA 4.1 system that has been deprecated on JIRA 4.4.5 or 6. This is very important, since the backup of your JIRA 4.1 may contain data that won't work on newer versions.

My personal suggestion:

1. Clone your production environment to a staging one;
2. On the staging system, upgrade it manually to 4.4.5;
3. Validate the new JIRA 4.4.5 (custom fields, workflows, etc) to check if everything is working perfectly;
4. Upgrade from JIRA 4.4.5 to 6.0.x via rapid method.

If the step 4 didn't work, try the manual mode from JIRA 4.4.5 to 6.

Best regards,
Lucas Timm

[Brian Uri]

Thank you, this is exactly the level of detail I needed!