Step-by-step guide to migration from Jira Server to Cloud

It is likely that you are looking to move your Jira instance to the cloud since you have landed on this page. In addition to accelerating business growth and spending less money, you may also want to increase team productivity and reduce ownership costs. In any case, 90% of all workloads will be in the cloud by 2021, so there is no excuse not to be current.

Jira Confluence Server to Cloud Migration

In some ways, you’re right if you think migrating the  Jira Confluence server to the cloud isn’t straightforward. It is important that you receive some guidance in order to get everything done correctly. Our goal at Sentify is to help you with that. First and foremost, you need to know that there are several ways to migrate from Jira server to Jira cloud. According to your needs, you can choose the method.

Depending on your situation, you may already have a cloud site or you may create a completely new one. If you want to migrate everything, you can do so or you can migrate only certain projects/spaces. Therefore, a clear migration plan will reduce the time and risk of errors during the migration process.

Additionally, none of these methods will migrate apps or app data. There is no help from Atlassian’s support team in this case, so you will have to determine which cloud-based apps you need.

Using this simple scheme, you can determine which Jira migration method is best suited to your needs.

The steps involved in migrating from Jira Server to Jira Cloud

Assessment

Hence, the first step is to determine the difference between cloud-hosted Jira and self-hosted Jira deployments in order to select the Jira cloud that suits your business best. It is important to keep in mind that Jira server and Jira cloud are not simply different types of deployments.

Revisions should be done for apps and plugins you use as well. We want to find out if they can be migrated to the cloud and if they are available in the cloud. You can save some time and effort by using Cloud Migration Assistant for Jira.


The app assessment feature shows all the apps on your server, whether a cloud version is available, whether feature parity is present, and whether you can migrate. The next step is to speak with your team. It is typically possible to accomplish the process smoothly with the assistance of the following experts.

  • Management of projects,
  • Administrators of systems,
  • Managers of financial institutions,
  • In the field of technical engineering and testing,
  • Experts in legal compliance and security.

In order to effectively navigate a migration period, you need to set clear guidelines. Maintaining clear and consistent communication is your goal.

Planning

It’s time to start planning your migration once you’ve answered all your questions with your team. Start by setting up your organization and verifying your domain to make the migration process risk-free.

Prior to moving self-hosted instances to the cloud, you collected information about them. With this information, you can estimate the complexity of the task.
Preparation

Having already mapped out a migration plan, you can begin preparing your data, team, and environment for the move. It usually takes a few days, but in some cases it can take weeks for this stage.

During preparation, you must communicate with your team to ensure minimal disruption during migration, then complete the pre-migration checklist, make sure you use the supported Jira version, and finally install all cloud apps you intend to use.

Testing

Regardless of whether Jira server to cloud migration is not likely to be overly complicated, testing should not be skipped. To develop a migration runbook, it is crucial to ensure that everything is in place, to find out how long the migration will take, and to uncover any issues.

To migrate your test, use Atlassian’s testing guide if all the checkboxes on the pre-migration list are checked.

Migration

Having worked so hard for so long, the big day has finally arrived. In the next few days, all last-minute issues will need to be sorted out, production migration will take place, and data and users will be moved to the cloud.

You should set both your self-hosted and server sites to read-only mode before starting the migration. The switchover will be easier if you do this. Jira Server does not have a read-only mode, but you can set up a permission scheme that allows browsing permission for all projects manually. Use a Jira wide banner to make sure all users on your site are aware that your site has gone into read-only mode at the moment.

After that, remove the runbook you created earlier and follow the steps and timings to move your data to the cloud. Make sure all apps you plan on using in the cloud are installed and migrated. Inspect everything to make sure it works properly. The Jira server should be configured to display a banner that redirects users to the cloud across the whole site.

Congratulations, you can now launch Jira Cloud

Could it be true? The migration of Jira from the server to the cloud has been completed. To get started, we recommend studying the Jira cloud documentation. Make sure your team is aware of it as well. Information about new bookmarking links, how to log in, what to reset, functionality changes, and who to contact for help must be communicated.

Make sure employees have access to the new Jira instance since it will take them some time to adjust. As Jira cloud is set up differently, pay attention to data security.

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