Atlassian, the company behind Jira, has decided to discontinue support for their server offerings, including Jira Server, after February 2024. They stopped selling Server licenses in February 2021, and in February 2023, they also discontinued sales of Server apps and third-party plugins. This means that Server products will no longer receive support for bug fixes, and users may face security vulnerabilities if they don’t migrate to Jira Cloud before February 15th, 2024.
Atlassian’s decision to focus on cloud-based solutions is aimed at providing greater accessibility, flexibility, and scalability.
In this article, you’ll learn how to migrate your data from Jira Server to Jira Cloud. In doing so, you’ll learn about a few key considerations you need to take into account when migrating as well as common pitfalls you can avoid.
Jira Server migration can be a complex undertaking that demands careful planning and execution. To avoid potential failures or data loss, it’s recommended that you upgrade to the latest version of Jira Server before proceeding with the migration process. This is because specific requirements must be met to ensure compatibility between Jira Server and Jira Cloud, given their differing architectures.
Atlassian has outlined six fundamental steps that you need to take to successfully complete your migration journey:
These steps are pivotal. For instance, before migrating your data to Jira Cloud, you need to evaluate your current Jira Server setup. Thanks to third-party plugins and custom code, Jira Server provides more customization options than Jira Cloud; this means you need to make sure that the plugin vendor has developed a version compatible with the cloud if you’ve extensively customized your Jira instance. If you don’t, migration will be impossible, and your solution won’t transfer to the cloud.
Similarly, if you’ve customized your Jira Server with scripts and custom code using Java APIs, you may need to rewrite your code to use REST APIs for compatibility with Jira Cloud.
Atlassian provides a pre-migration checklist for each migration method (more on this later) that can help you prepare for the migration process. It’s important to assess your Jira Server against the pre-migration checklist of your selected method. This will help you identify specific requirements that need to be addressed such as your user migration strategy, particularly if you’re using an external directory.
Although Jira Cloud offers several advantages including reliability, scalability, simplified administration, and out-of-the-box features for automation, it’s important to note that it also has some limitations, including the following:
In addition to understanding the limitations of cloud offerings, you need to consider the financial implications of your migration. This includes factoring in the size and complexity of your Jira instance as well as the migration strategy and method that you’re planning on using.
Following are some of the costs you will incur during the migration process:
According to Atlassian, migrating to the cloud is a journey that can take up to nine months (or longer), depending on the size of your team and the complexity of your instance.
Before you begin the migration process, you need to assess your team’s cloud readiness. This involves completing a series of steps to ensure a seamless transition:
One of the most important things to consider is the strategy you’ll use to migrate your data to Jira Cloud. There are three common approaches:
Just like the strategy, there are three common migration methods available for Jira Server:
The migration method you’ve chosen will determine the checklists that you need to work with. For example, if you opted to use the JCMA, it will help you review your data to ensure that all your users have a valid and unique email address. However, you still need to go through the pre-migration checklist for JCMA, where you will be mandated to create a user migration plan depending on the Atlassian products you want to migrate. This includes ensuring that your Jira Server is running on a supported version.
Once you’ve finished the checklist, you’re ready to perform a test migration.
Although backing up your data is included in your pre-migration checklists, it’s particularly important for cases where you already have some data in your Jira Cloud. In these instances, you need to back up the data on your Jira Server or your Jira Cloud before commencing the migration process. This will enable you to easily recover or restore your data in the case of any unforeseen incidents.
If you already have some data in your Jira Cloud site that you want to migrate to, in order to avoid a failed migration and/or data loss, it’s recommended that you take a snapshot using an app like Rewind Backups for Jira Cloud. Before taking the snapshot, you should put Jira in read-only mode, especially when you’re performing the production migration. This prevents your users from updating the data in your instance during or after the snapshot is taken.
The size of your data determines the time that is required for the completion of the migration process. To be able to accurately estimate your downtime, you need to have successfully performed a test migration.
The test migration is a crucial part of the migration process because it prepares you for any incidents that you may face. Similarly, upon the successful completion of the test migration, you’ll be able to test the accuracy of your data in the cloud in comparison to your data in Jira Server. For instance, you may want to test the effectiveness of the post functions that are relying on third-party plugins/apps in your workflow.
Before migrating to Jira Cloud, you need to be aware of a few pitfalls so that you can avoid making an already-complex process more complicated. Following are a few common pitfalls:
Insufficient planning and preparation is one of the most common pitfalls when migrating to the cloud. To avoid any complications during the migration process, it’s crucial to evaluate your current infrastructure and data to identify any possible issues. This includes verifying that you’re running on the latest Jira Server version to prevent data loss, ensuring that your third-party plugins have a migration path or a contingency plan, and accurately determining the size of your data to select the appropriate cloud plan.
If you’re not familiar with the processes or you don’t have the capacity to learn, make sure you consult with an Atlassian Partner or reach out to Atlassian Support if you’re planning to buy any of their premium products. You’ll be assigned a Cloud Migration Manager and support engineers from Atlassian that will work with your internal team until the migration is complete.
According to the Atlassian Team, many companies don’t assess the compatibility of third-party plugins prior to migration. It’s easy to forget about these plugins when your focus is primarily on the data (*ie* projects, issues, and workflows).
For companies who are heavily invested in customized solutions, this can become a huge issue because it results in a broken user experience that can ultimately affect teams and stakeholders relying on this solution post-migration.
To avoid losing the association between your users and data such as reporter, assignee, and custom user fields, it’s important to migrate your users before migrating your data. Failure to plan properly could result in the loss of custom user fields.
Thorough testing prepares you for possible incidents during the migration process. Due to the architectural differences between Jira Server and Jira Cloud, some changes will occur in the cloud that you’ll only notice post-migration. With adequate testing, you can take proactive measures toward training and adoption.
Similarly, adequate testing will enable you to get an estimate of how much time you will need to perform the production migration, which in turn dictates when and how much downtime you need to plan on.
Depending on your team’s experience, you need to make sure that you have enough support. The user interface in Jira Cloud is quite different from what your team may be used to. As a result, users with little or no cloud experience will be dissatisfied and have issues adapting to the new system.
It’s important that you provide a comprehensive training guide for your teams to ensure a smooth transition to a cloud environment.
Because Jira Server will officially reach its end of life in February 2024, you need to migrate your data. In this article, you learned about all of the steps you need to consider when migrating.
When working through the migration process, the importance of planning well can’t be overstated. It’s essential for a smooth transition. If you opt for the Lift and Shift strategy and you already have a Jira site in the cloud containing some data that you can’t write again, proper planning and research can help you learn that you need to take a snapshot of your data in the cloud using a reputable backup app like Rewind Backups for Jira. After your migration from Jira Server to Jira Cloud, the Rewind app will enable you to restore the snapshot in conjunction with your migrated data.
