Confluence 8.0 Upgrade Notes
Here are some important notes on upgrading to Confluence 8.0. For details of the new features and improvements in this release, see the Confluence 8.0 Release Notes.
On this page:
Upgrade notes
Recommended upgrade paths to Confluence 8
If you are on Confluence 6.0.5 or later, you can upgrade directly to the latest version of Confluence 8.0
If you are on Confluence 6.0.4 or earlier, we recommend you upgrade to 7.19 LTS first, then upgrade to Confluence 8.0 or later.
There have been significant changes since Confluence 6.x including to supported platforms and configuration, so we recommend you read the upgrade notes for all versions so you don't miss any important changes.
Confluence 8.0 is a platform release with breaking changes. We strongly recommend that you take a full back up of your Confluence Home directory and your database before upgrading.
Upgrading to 8.0 requires downtime
As a platform release, you won’t be able to perform a rolling upgrade to Confluence 8.0. Upgrading from any version of Confluence to Confluence 8.0 will require downtime.
H2 database support removed
We have removed support for H2 embedded database in Confluence 8.0. If you choose to continue using H2 database in your development and testing cycle, you’ll need to run AMPS 8.6.0 or newer.
See Migrating to Another Database for a step-by-step guide on moving your production system to a supported database.
UTF8MB4 encoding for MySQL databases
We have ended support for UTF8 database encoding in MySQL databases. If you run Confluence with a supported MySQL database, you should make sure the database encoding is utf8mb4 before upgrading to Confluence 8.0.
Learn how to fix the collation and character set of a MySQL database manually
Changes to table and macro display in the editor
To increase the speed of our editor, we’ve stopped providing a patch that fixed a bad editing experience on older browsers.
The patch automatically wrapped macros and tables in paragraph tags. With its removal, you may see tables and macros "touching" in the editor. Rest assured, when you preview or publish the page your macros and tables will appear well-spaced.
Screenshot: Image on left shows no space between tables and macros in edit mode, image on the right shows how the spacing appears on a published page.
Supported platform changes
Support for Java 17
In Confluence 8.0, we have added support for Java 17. To develop apps running against Java 17, you must be running with AMPS 8.3.3 or later.
End of support for the following databases
As previously announced, the following databases are no longer supported:
MySQL 5.7
PostgreSQL 11
H2 embedded database
End of support for Java 8
As previously announced, Java 8 is no longer supported. If you use Java 8, you should move to Java 11 or 17 runtime.
End of support for datasource connections
As previously announced, we have ended support for data source connections in Confluence 8.0. If you use JNDI DataSource connections, we recommend you connect your database with a direct JDBC URL.
How to convert a datasource to a direct JDBC connection
End of support for UTF8 encoding for MySQL
As previously announced, UTF8 collation encoding for MySQL databases will no longer be supported.
Removal of Usage stats
As previously announced, Usage Stats will no longer be supported. It has been superseded by Confluence Analytics.
For more information on these notices, see End of Support Announcements for Confluence.
End of support announcements
There are no advance announcements for end of support.
Infrastructure changes
Head to Preparing for Confluence 8.0 to find out more about changes under the hood.
Known issues
- There are a number of known issues when upgrading Confluence on specific database versions. See Confluence 7.11 upgrade notes if you are upgrading from Confluence 7.10 or earlier.
If you are upgrading from Confluence 6.3 or earlier, there's a known issue where spaces do not appear in the space directory. You'll need to reindex your site after upgrading to fix this.
- If you use Apache to limit who can access the admin console, you should update your configuration. See Using Apache to limit access to the Confluence administration interface for our suggested configuration.
- There is a known issue where read-only mode attempts to write to
<shared-home>/confluence.cfg.xml, but the file doesn't exist in the shared home directory. This problem affects sites that have been previously upgraded from Confluence 6.0 or earlier. See Could not save access.mode into the shared confluence.cfg.xml file error after upgrading to Confluence Data Center 6.10 - There is a known issue where some fonts that Confluence relies on are not available in older Linux distributions. See Confluence UI shows garbled or corrupt text on CAPTCHA, macros, and/or diagrams due to missing fonts
If you encounter a problem during the upgrade and can't solve it, please create a support ticket and one of our support engineers will help you.
Upgrade procedure
Always test the upgrade in a test environment before upgrading in production.
To upgrade Confluence to the latest version:
- Go to Administration
> General Configuration > Plan your upgrade and select the version you want to upgrade to. This will run the pre-upgrade checks. - Go to Administration > General Configuration > Troubleshooting and support tools to check your license validity, application server, database setup, and more.
- If your version of Confluence is more than one version behind, read the release notes and upgrade guides for all releases between your version and the latest version.
- Back up your installation directory, home directory, and database.
- Download the latest version of Confluence.
- Follow the instructions in the Upgrade Guide.
Update configuration files after upgrading
The contents of configuration files such as server.xml, web.xml , setenv.bat / setenv.sh, and confluenceinit.properties change from time to time.
When upgrading, we recommend manually reapplying any additions to these files (such as proxy configuration, datasource, JVM parameters) rather than simply overwriting the file with the file from your previous installation; otherwise you will miss out on any improvements we have made.