Migrating Jira to new server and keeping same database

Question

Our JIRA 5.2.11 is running on an old Windows 2003 (VM) server.  We are getting ready to migrate it to a Windows 2008 (VM) server.  The new server will be 64-bit, whereas the old one is 32-bit.  Our JIRA Oracle database is on an Exadata server, and we don't plan on making any changes to the database or upgrading JIRA to a new version.  I looked through the "Migrating JIRA to Another Server" instructions, and I don't see why we couldn't shut JIRA down, back up our Oracle database and JIRA Home and Installation directories, install JIRA 5.2.11 (64-bit) on the new Windows server, copy our existing JIRA Home directory to the new server, do any configuration updates needed, then start JIRA.  It seems to me that our existing dbconfig.xml file could be used to connect to the existing database.  Is there a reason why we have to do the XML backup of our database, do the install with an empty database, and then import the XML backup file into the new database? I looked through similar questions and answers here, but I don't know if they apply to our specific situation.

Thanks,

Stephanie

Zul NS [Atlassian] · Accepted Answer

We usually recommend doing upgrades and/or migrations via the XML backup when it comes to JIRA. However, understanding the idea of your migration process, it does looks fine.

But, I would say is best to create a copy of the database schema and get the new server to point to the new copy of the database schema. We have seen couple of cases with two JIRA connecting to one database schema where it just a mess.