Migrating from JIRA Cloud to Server applications

Migrating JIRA applications to another server

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This page is for people who are using a JIRA Cloud application site and wish to move to a JIRA application instance that is hosted on their own servers. 

If you want to move a project, not your entire site, then see Restoring a project from backup (note, the instructions on that page take into account the version mismatch between JIRA Server and Cloud applications).

Summary

You will need to download and install the latest production release of JIRA Server applications. Check the JIRA application download page for the latest version. After you install the latest production version, you can move your data from your hosted JIRA Cloud application site to your new JIRA Server application instance.

For all of the following procedures, you must be logged in as a user with the JIRA Administrators global permission.

Before you begin

JIRA Cloud applications are regularly updated with the latest features and improvements, which means they are a later version than the latest downloadable version of JIRA applications. If you want to migrate from JIRA Cloud applications to JIRA Server applications, please be aware of the following information before you begin:

Feature loss

If you migrate from JIRA Cloud to Server applications, you will find a few features missing. This is because our Cloud and Server products are developed independently of each other as our Cloud and Server customers have different needs.

Password reset

Your JIRA Cloud users will need to reset their passwords before they can log in to the new JIRA Server instance. 

JIRA application licenses

Your Atlassian Cloud license can't be used in an instance installed from JIRA Server applications. You'll need to generate a new JIRA Server application license from https://my.atlassian.com.

You can reuse your licenses for plugins in your instance installed from JIRA Server applications. The licenses for Atlassian plugins and Gliffy for JIRA applications can be viewed on https://my.atlassian.com. For all other third-party plugins, contact the third-party vendor for a license.

Migrating other Cloud applications

The instructions on this page only apply to JIRA applications. If you are migrating other Cloud applications (e.g. Confluence Cloud to an instance installed from Confluence Server), see this page: Backing up and exporting data.

Note, if you are migrating JIRA Cloud applications and other applications (e.g. Confluence Cloud) to an instance hosted on your own servers, you'll lose integration features that are native to Cloud. These can be re-enabled by configuring application links between your applications. See Using AppLinks to link to other applications for instructions. Contact support if you need assistance.

Instructions

1. Generate a backup of your JIRA Cloud application data

  1. Log in to your JIRA Cloud application site as an administrator.
  2. Generate an XML export of your JIRA Cloud application data by following the instructions in Exporting issues. Note that the export process will strip your cloud application and plugin licenses out of the XML, so the licenses will remain available in your JIRA Cloud site but not in your Server instance.

2. Install JIRA Server applications

You must use the latest version of JIRA Server applications.

  1. Download the latest version.
  2. Follow the instructions to install JIRA until you are instructed to run the setup wizard, then see step 3 below.

3. Import your JIRA Cloud application data into your JIRA Server application

Follow the instructions in on the setup wizard until you have configured a database (described in step 1 of Running the setup wizard). If you already have some data in your JIRA application installation, this step will overwrite it.

In step 2 of the setup wizard (Application Properties),  you will be asked whether you have existing data. Click import your existing data and follow the instructions to import the JIRA Cloud application backup that you generated earlier. Note, you may see the following message. This is a warning only, your import will still work.


See Restoring Data for more information.

For instances with large backups (2Gigabyte and up), we recommend importing the attachments separate from the Issue and user data. To do this:

  1. Unzip the backup file.
  2. Compress the activeobjects.xml and the entities.xml files only.
  3. Import that compressed file.

4. Copy across attachments

If you included your attachments in the export:

  1. Extract the backup file that was downloaded.
  2. Copy across the contents of the attachments folder to the $JIRA_HOME/data/attachments directory for JIRA Server.

5. Change the system administrator password

  1. Log in to your new JIRA application, using the following credentials: 
    • Username: sysadmin
    • Password: sysadmin
  2. Change the password immediately after logging in.

6. Check which plugins are installed on your JIRA Cloud application site

Any plugins that you are currently using with JIRA Cloud application will need to be installed in your JIRA application installation. For example, Gliffy, Tempo, etc. 

Choose > Add-ons.  The 'Find add-ons' screen shows add-ons available via the Atlassian Marketplace. Choose Manage add-ons to view the plugins currently installed on your JIRA applications. Choose Manage add-ons and note the plugins listed under the User-installed Plugins section. You will need to note the plugin names and versions.

7. Install plugins (add-ons)

For each plugin that you noted in the previous step, install it in your JIRA applications. You must install a version of the plugin that is equal to or later than the plugin version that was installed in the cloud. Atlassian does not provide support for data that is downgraded as a result of installing an older version of a plugin.

See Managing Add-ons for instructions on how to install a plugin. You will need to manually add the plugin license keys.

8. Reset the passwords for your users

After you finish migrating from JIRA Cloud to JIRA Server, you must reset the passwords for your users. To do this, you can either:

Versions for imports

We recommend that you always use the latest JIRA server version.

Last modified on Jun 22, 2018

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