Jira Server Migration to Datacenter - Complete Guide (2023)

Did you know that Atlassian servers are going to be shut down? Learn about the benefits of migrating to a data center from the articles below and learn how to take advantage of the transition.

Atlassian has completed the sale of new server licenses. Support for existing server licenses will also end on February 15, 2024. As a result of this change, all organizations have started migrating their projects from Jira Server to Jira Datacenter or Atlassian Cloud. A data center is a self-managing environment that scales according to your organization's requirements and provides substantial resources to serve your users and protect your production environment from any failures.

Data centers via Atlassian Cloud

• Datacenter provides continuous access to Jira applications
• Your application system scales without additional downtime to improve performance
• You can connect additional hardware for horizontal scalability
• During periods of heavy load, the load is distributed across all nodes in the cluster to ensure high availability of the Jira application
• You'll be in control of all your data instead of relying on Atlassian to fetch specific data from your database

Advantages of Migrating to a Data Center

• High availability:-Clustering of Jira nodes ensures high availability of the data center. If a node fails, the load balancer redirects users to another active node in the pool, and any user experiences very little downtime because the load balancer takes care of redirecting to the active node.
• Scale Performance:-Each node in a datacenter cluster has increased capacity for concurrent connections, so you can scale your applications without sacrificing performance.
• Instant Scalability:-You will be able to add new data center nodes to the cluster without disruption or downtime. Indexes will be automatically synced from existing nodes, so you'll have seamless deployments and maximum uptime for your users.
• No additional node license:-Data center licenses are issued based on the number of users. You can predict the cost of scaling your environment without paying additional licensing fees for new nodes.
• Disaster Recovery:-In the data center, the disaster recovery area is separated from the production environment. In case of any disaster, all users are directed here, no time is wasted and work is ensured.
• Compliance and Security:-You can have a secure authentication protocol, and personal authentication using SAML 2.0 provides additional security.
• infrastructure:-Available infrastructure: - Cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP, Digital Ocean) or on-premises platforms.

How to migrate projects from Atlassian Server to Data Center?

• Right to use:-For migration assistance, you can contact Atlassian migration experts. Compare Jira Server and Datacenter editions and start exploring Datacenter. You need to understand your current product and who is using it. You need to run discovery on the server to get information about projects, issues, custom fields, workflows, Java versions, users, external user management, operating systems, databases, base version data, installations, and home directories.
• plan: -Once you decide to migrate from Server to Data Center, you can start developing a migration strategy and prepare a project plan that includes all activities, task owners, task estimates, plugin/plugin data migration strategies and projects, as well as user migration strategies, backup timing , rollback strategy, test cases, documentation, list of things not to migrate, or any constraints that need to be communicated in advance.
• Prepare:-Now that your project is in place, you need to bring context, people, and data to this stage. You need to start communicating the plan with team members, stakeholders, and business users. Use this migration as an opportunity to declutter your Jira instance by removing unwanted/unused custom fields, schemas, unused test projects, and inactive or unnecessary projects. Eliminating such data would also help reduce immigration complexity. Depending on the defined migration strategy, you can perform pre-checks prior to a test migration to ensure that your data and environment are ready for the test migration.
• test: -You'll perform a dry run to make sure everything works and estimate how long the migration will take, including troubleshooting and data backup time. After all data has been migrated, you can submit the data center instance for user acceptance testing. Let business users run tests based on their daily activities and provided test cases. All reported issues and their solutions should be documented so that users do not report them again during the production migration.

Once user acceptance testing is complete and approved, we can move on to production migration. Discuss production migration plans/dates with stakeholders and provide users with these dates and projects to migrate ahead of time.

• migrant:-Depending on your migration strategy, you can make the server instance read-only so that users cannot add data to the server instance. Additionally, Jira's site-wide banner was updated to state that the Jira server is read-only during the migration timeline. After migration, you need to access all projects from the Datacenter instance and provide the Datacenter URL to redirect users. Back up your server and data center instances before starting the migration. This backup will help if the migration fails and needs to be recovered. After the backup is complete, perform the migration operation and post-migration data validation.
• beginning:-Communicate with stakeholders and business users to complete the migration and share the new URL in the data center. To help your team adapt to the new environment, take some time to address post-migration questions, feedback, and questions. Hyper-care can be extended to make the user comfortable in the new environment based on the questions or queries the user asks. Once all issues are resolved, we can log off stakeholders and business users to conclude the migration activity

Challenges associated with migrating from Atlassian Server to Data Center

• Duplicate project key/project name:-If you have a project on your server instance with the "ABC" project key, and your data center instance already has another project with the same key, that project will not migrate. To overcome this challenge, you will need to rename your server or data center instance keys before proceeding with the migration.
• Filtering using ID in JQL:-There may be filters in the server instance that use project IDs, custom field IDs, and sprint IDs instead of names. Since the two environments are different, the ID will change after migration. As a result, the filter stops working or starts giving wrong results. To avoid this, ask users to edit filters and use names instead of IDs, or replace invalid IDs with valid names or IDs after migration.
• Plugin/Plugin Data:-Server instances can use plugins that store data in an external database instead of the Jira database. Then plan your plugin data migration strategy.
• Custom plugins:-Your server instance might use a custom plugin for custom fields, if your Datacenter instance doesn't support that plugin, you won't be able to migrate projects, so in this case you should make sure your custom plugin is compatible with the migration center data beforehand compatible.

How does Jade Global help with immigration matters?

Any migration project is of course a complex endeavor. However, with a wealth of resources and guidance available, your migration path is sure to be smooth and hassle-free. To get the most out of your migration, it's also a good idea to work with a consultant who has the knowledge, experience, and experience to ensure a successful and timely migration.

Jade helps organizations across industries meet their data center Atlassian server migration needs: from integrating and deploying the entire Atlassian toolkit to hosting management, custom plugin development, deployment, upgrades, migrations, support, and more. Given your team's expertise, transition complexity, and timeframe, Jade Global can help you transition to Atlassian Data Center or Cloud with minimal disruption.

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