When attempting a zero down time upgrade, Jira will not start noting that 'Jira does not support zero downtime upgrades between major releases'
Platform Notice: Data Center - This article applies to Atlassian products on the Data Center platform.
Note that this knowledge base article was created for the Data Center version of the product. Data Center knowledge base articles for non-Data Center-specific features may also work for Server versions of the product, however they have not been tested. Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.
*Except Fisheye and Crucible
Summary
While attempting to perform a zero downtime upgrade for Jira Data Center between major version releases (ex: Jira 8 to Jira 9) once all the nodes are upgraded they cannot be restarted as a cluster.
Environment
Jira Data Center 7.3 and higher
Diagnosis
The following message is shown in the atlassian-jira.log when attempting to start the node:
Unable to start JIRA. java.lang.illegalStateException: Your node with Jira version 9.2.0 will not start up with version 8.22.2 because Jira does not support zero downtime upgrades between major releases.
Version numbers in the message may differ
A single upgraded node can be started if clustering is disabled by removing the cluster.properties files from the Jira Home directory for that node.
Cause
A zero downtime upgrade cannot be performed between major version releases, for example Jira 8 to Jira 9. Zero downtime upgrades can only be performed when upgrading within a major version such as Jira 8.13.2 to Jira 8.20.11.
Solution
In order to restore the clustering functionality, the instance will need to be taken out of upgrade mode and then upgraded with downtime. To this:
- Stop all nodes.
- Downgrade one of the nodes to previous version.
- Prior to starting the older version of the software, you will need to add the following JVM argument.
-Djira.downgrade.allowed=true - Setting properties and options on startup provides additional details on adding JVM arguments.
- Prior to starting the older version of the software, you will need to add the following JVM argument.
- Start up only this node in cluster mode (with the cluster.properties file in the Jira Home location).
- Disable upgrade mode via Settings > Applications > Jira Upgrades > Cancel Upgrade.
- Stop the downgraded node.
- Start one of the upgraded nodes in cluster mode and ensure the system is upgraded and accessible from this node.
- If it is accessible from the upgraded node, upgrade and start all remaining nodes.