Jira 8.5 Long Term Support release upgrade guide

Customers value and trust Long Term Support releases because of continued access to critical security, stability, data integrity and performance issues that we provide until each version reaches end of life. Long Term Support release is the perfect combo of great new features and great stability.

Why you should upgrade

Features galore

Jira 8.5 is simply way better than previous releases. Have a look at these key features:

• Issue archiving: de-clutter your instance by archiving individual issues. You can archive them within seconds, and we keep them safe for you for as long as you need.
• Batching emails: tired of receiving separate email for every single issue update? Now, you can get them in batches that arrive at the intervals you specify. 
• Jira Server mobile app: never lose touch with what's going on with your issues as now we're serving Jira on the go. Browse, create and comment on issues wherever, whenever.

Changes & improvements

Jira 8.5 comes with a number of changes, including features, supported platforms, and performance improvements:

• Change log: Get a quick roll-up of the most important changes in the latest versions. 
  
• Hardware recommendations for Data Center: Find out which hardware runs best with Jira 8.5.

Some annoying bugs fixed

• RCE via Velocity Template in Email Subject and Contact Administrator
• UPM action will flush the cache and cause JIRA to stall
• In Jira Data Center, when a node executing reindexing is abruptly stopped other nodes will continue indicating that re-indexing is in progress

Want to know more? See our change log.

Summary of the upgrade

Here's a summary of the upgrade path you'll be following:

Optimize your upgrade process

We want your upgrade to be plain and quick sailing, so here are some tips you can consider to speed up the process:

Estimate your downtime

• run the upgrade on the test environment to get an estimation of how long your upgrade might take in production. Note that in addition to the downtime related to the usual upgrade tasks, you should plan some extra time for full reindexing.  

Optional: Faster reindexing for Jira Data Center

• Jira 8.5 brings a completely new index, which means that your old index will be incompatible after the upgrade. You will need to reindex, there’s no running away from it. However, we’ve created some procedures for advanced users that will let you speed it up, significantly reducing downtime. Learn more

Upgrading apps

• go to  > Manage apps and look up the suggestions provided by your Universal Plugin Manager (UPM). Some apps have cross-platform compatibility and can be updated even before the upgrade. Update them in advance to speed up the upgrade process. 
  
  
• test upgrading apps in your test environment first. Then, you'll now which apps need upgrading and which need removing before you move to production.

Check custom configuration file list

It might happen that your Jira has files that contain custom configuration. If you want to keep this config on your upgraded Jira instance, you need to copy these custom changes to the respective files in your new Jira. 

• If you're on the latest version of the ASTS plugin, go to  > Applications > Plan your upgrade to see the list of files in which you introduced custom changes. If you want to keep these changes in your upgraded instance, you need to copy the changes (not entire files!) to the respective files during upgrade. Have this list handy, it will save you time during the upgrade process. 
  
  
• If you cannot pull up the Plan your upgrade page, compile the list of files you've modified. For some suggestions regarding files that get modified most frequently, see here. 
  
  

Pre-upgrade steps

Here are the steps you should complete to prepare your current environment for the upgrade. 

Testing the upgrade

Create a replica of your Jira instance in a testing environment, so you can test the upgrade.

Create a test environment

Preparing for the upgrade

Get Jira ready for the upgrade by running a health check, checking app compatibility, and creating backups.

View pre-upgrade steps

Upgrading

Want to have a step-by-step overview of your upcoming upgrade tasks? Great! We've laid everything out in this Trello board.

Jira Server

I'm using a stand-alone version of Jira.

Choose this one

Jira Data Center

I have a clustered version of Jira.

Choose this one

Known issues