Upgrading Jira 7.0 to 7.13

[Vyvyan Fuge]

Hi Everyone

Have just started with a new company who use Jira. Personally I have never used it or seen it before so please excuse my ignorance on this platform.

There are two VMs running Windows 2012 R2. One VM has Jira Software v 7.0 installed with the other VM running the SQL 2012 hosting several databases including the Jira instance.

The company have tasked me with not only upgrading to the latest version but also to cluster the platform. Being an Agile based company they rely heavily on this platform with a recent outage highlighting just how heavily dependent they are on this platform. Hence the reason for implementing HA.

So a few initial questions:

Can Jira v7.0 be upgraded direct to v 7.13 or should the upgrade be more staged?

If possible, I would prefer to install a new Jira v7.13 cluster with a new SQL instance on the existing SQL server and restore the present Jira database into the new SQL instance.  Is this a possible approach?

Initial investigation into configuring a Jira cluster highlights the need for a front end load balancer, with the respective schematics indicating this needs to be a layer 1 (physical) load balancer. Is this necessary? I would have expected a clustered VIP to provide the load balancing?

Any links to respective docs would be appreciated and thanks in advance for your help.

Vyvyan

 Hi Again Guys.

As per your advice have conducted considerable testing of the upgrade process of JIra Core 7.0 to 7.13, within an isolated test environment. A am now looking for your assistance again with the upgraded instance of Jira failing to start a whole bunch of plugins.

Have 2 VMs running Server 2012 R2 with 24Gb RAM, 8 x 8 core CPUs and 100GB system partition. One VM ruinning Jira and the other running SQL 2012.

 After a few "gotchas" the following is the process taken to get to my present point.

1) Used SQL native tools to peform database backup

2) Stop Atlassian Jira service. Problems were experienced during initial attempt with failing to upgrade files that were locked by process.

3) Applied Full Control NTFS permissions to account running Jira upgrade to everything under c:\program files\Altlassian\*.*. Although the account is a Domain Admin account was unable to save the dbconfig.xml during the config.bat process.

Can detail the plugins not strating if you wish but there is so many of them and I can Cut\Paste the screen prompt.

HELP!!!

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

In theory, you can go straight from Jira 7.0 to 7.13.  If you have a plain Jira with only Atlassian Applications and Apps, then I would have quite a high confidence that this will work.  If you've got lots of Apps installed, then less so, but it should still work.

As always, the key is to test the upgrade first.

I would strongly recommend considering the move to Data Centre as a separate project though.  Even if you end up doing upgrade and migrate to DC on the same day, plan and test them as two distinct steps.  Upgrade first, buy and implement DC second.

I'd strongly recommend reading through ALL the docs for DC before you start planning an implementation - there's a LOT more than just a look at a load balancer.  See https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver/installing-jira-data-center-938846870.html

[Tarun Sapra]

Just to add another link to an already good answer from Nic

https://confluence.atlassian.com/enterprise/moving-from-server-to-data-center-953127136.html

[Vyvyan Fuge]

Guys. Thanks to both of you. Wasn't expecting such a quick response.

Thanks for the respective links. I'll do a little more research and come back to you if I may?