Preparing
Get and install Project Configurator for Jira
Project Configurator for Jira is available at the Atlassian Marketplace as a Paid-via-Atlassian Plugin 2 add-on. It can be installed and licensed in all the usual ways, either from the Universal Plugin Manager inside Jira, or from its page at the Marketplace.
The plugin must be available in all instances where it will be used for exporting or importing.
Start a staging instance as a clone of production
You should start with a staging instance that is a copy of your production machine. This will ensure that configuration changes applied in staging cause the same effects they will have when applied to production. In other words, this will make tests and validation on staging representative of what will happen later when the configuration changes are moved into production.
For more information on how to clone a Jira instance, see Establishing staging server environments.
Synchronize staging with production
If the staging instance was cloned from production some time ago, it is a good idea to "refresh it" with the latest configuration changes from production. Remember – as the staging instance is a closer reflection of production, the tests performed in staging will be more representative of the effects of the new configuration when it is finally promoted to production.
If the Jira Install directory at production hasn't been changed (for example, installing new add-ons or upgrading existing ones) since it was last cloned to staging, you don't need to repeat the whole cloning process. Just make a backup of production and restore it at staging. See Backing up data and Restoring data.
Agree with users on promotion windows
It is a good idea to agree previously with users when they will be available to review and validate changes at the staging instance.
As a safety measure, we will take a backup of the production Jira before promoting configuration changes to it. This implies that the contents of that instance must be frozen after the backup so that, if the need arises to restore the backup, there won't be any last-minute changes that are lost. So, it will be very convenient to find in advance candidate time slots where the following operations can be performed on production:
- Locking the instance
- Creating a backup
- Promoting configuration changes from staging
- Validating these changes
- Unlocking the instance
Very likely, qualified users will have to be a part of this decision.
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