Before you begin

Step 1: Locate the Jira home directory to determine the initial installation method

We recommend upgrading Jira using the same method that was used to install it for the first time. If you’re unsure which method that was, find the location of your Jira home directory. That’s usually a good indicator of whether Jira was installed manually or from a binary installer. For more information, see Jira application home directory.

Step 2: Prepare for the upgrade

Make sure you have completed the steps in Preparing for the upgrade. These are mandatory pre-requisites, and are essential for a smooth upgrade.

Step 3: Choose your version

If you need help choosing the right version for you, head to the upgrade matrix to get a quick rundown of features, supported platforms, and technical upgrade notes for all Jira versions.

Step 4: Stop the cluster

Stop Jira on all nodes in the cluster. We also recommend that you configure your load balancer to redirect the traffic away from Jira until the upgrade is complete on all nodes.

Step 1. Download Jira

1. Download one of the Jira applications from our website. Choose the tar.gz or zip archive.

• • Jira Software
  • Jira Service Management (only tar.gz archive)

Step 2. Extract the files

Extract the archive you've downloaded, and start the upgrade.

1. Extract (unzip) the files to a directory (this is your new installation directory, and must be different to your existing installation directory). 

2. Point Jira to your existing Jira home directory.

   We recommend that you do it by setting the JIRA_HOME environment variable. For more info on how to do this, see Setting Jira home directory.

Step 3. Install the database driver

If you're using an Oracle or MySQL database, download a new JDBC driver. For other databases, you can omit this step.

1. Download one of the following drivers:
   
   
   • Oracle: JDBC driver 19.3 (ojdbc8)
   • MySQL: MySQL Connector/J 5.1 driver.
     
     
2. Place it in <installation-directory>/lib.

Step 4: Re-apply any custom changes and increase pool-max-size

While using Jira, you’ve probably added some custom modifications to Jira files. These may include connection details, settings related to memory allocation, or other JVM arguments. Usually, these are the files that contain custom changes: 

• server.xml
• dbconfig.xml
• jira-config.properties

• web.xml

For more information, see Important files in Jira.

In addition to these files, if your Jira is running over SSL, you need to reimport certificates into the trust store. For details on how to do this, see How to import a public SSL certificate into a JVM.

You need to re-apply your custom changes to your respective new Jira files by copying them from your backups.

Make sure you don't just copy over the old files, as the 'native' settings they contain might have changed between the Jira versions.

Pool-max-size

If you’re upgrading from Jira 7.x to the next platform version, such as 8.x or 9.x, we recommend that you change the pool-max-size parameter to 40 in your dbconfig.xml before the upgrade. Leaving the default value of 20 can cause various issues related to database connection. For information on implementing the change, see Tuning database connections.

Step 5. Disable automatic reindex

Because of the indexing changes introduced between 8.x and 9.x Jira platform versions, indexes from any earlier Jira version will be incompatible after the upgrade.
To create a new index, Jira will trigger an automatic reindex right after you start the application. To avoid reindexing twice (after startup and after upgrading your apps), you can disable the automatic reindex and then run the second one later, whenever you’re ready.

To disable automatic reindex:

1. Edit or create (if it doesn’t exist) the following file:

   <jira-home-directory>/jira-config.properties

2. Add the following line to the preceding file and then save your changes:

   upgrade.reindex.allowed=false

Post-upgrade steps on the first node

Complete these post-upgrade steps only on the first node (the one you've just upgraded). The remaining nodes will later download the upgraded apps and index from the shared directory.

Step 1. Start Jira for the first time

Start your new Jira version, and connect it to the database.

1. (Installer) Go back to your upgrade wizard and  start Jira.
   
   (Installer and Manual) You can also start Jira by going to <installation-directory>/bin, and running one of the following files:
   
   
   • Windows:  start-jira.bat
   • Linux:  start-jira.sh 


2. Open Jira in your browser.
   
   
3. Follow instructions on the screen to complete the setup. 

4. If you've missed any file with custom changes that have not been copied over, you can automatically copy the changes over now. 

   Note that the check for file changes is only be run on the following configuration files:

   - atlassian-jira/ directory
   - conf/server.xml
   - bin/setenv.sh

   and the automatic transfer is only be supported for ATST plugin 1.20.0 and later.

   To automatically transfer the changes, the installer copy of the modified file needs to be the same as in the version you're upgrading to.

   After the changes have been copied over, you'll be prompted to restart Jira.

Post-upgrade landing page

After a successful upgrade, you should see the post-upgrade landing page. It has some useful information about the new version, as shown below.

1. Need to know: A list of new features that might affect your work as an admin.
2. User apps: Status of your apps after the upgrade.
3. Application links: Status of your application links.
4. Release notes: Link to release notes where you can see more detailed information about the version you've upgraded to.

Step 2. (Optional) Update Jira Service Management

If you're using Jira Service Management, you can update it directly in the UI, without downloading a separate installer.

1. Go to Administration () > Applications > Versions and licenses.
2. Update Jira Service Management. This will automatically update Jira Service Management to a compatible version.

Step 3. Upgrade apps (add-ons)

Now you can upgrade apps that had the Compatible once both are updated status. If you need more information about the statuses and apps in general, see Preparing for the upgrade.

1. Go to Administration () > Manage apps > Manage apps.
2. Upgrade your apps to the supported versions.
3. Once the apps are upgraded, you can enable them.

Step 4. Rebuild index

Reindex Jira to recreate your index. This step might take some time, depending on how many issues and apps you have.

1. Go to Administration () > Indexing, and run Lock Jira and rebuild reindex.

Step 5. Copy the upgraded Jira as a template

In this step, you'll copy the new installation directory with all the modifications you did so far. This will give you a template that you'll later copy to other nodes.

1. Copy the new installation directory to some other location. This will be your template.

Upgrade remaining nodes

By now, you should have the ready Jira template, and upgraded add-ons and index data available in the shared directory. In this step, you'll copy the template to other nodes and start them one by one.

1. Copy the template installation directory to the new node.
   
   
2. If the path to the local home directory is different on this node, update it in the setenv.bat / setenv.sh file.
   
   
3. Start Jira on this node.
   
   
4. Rinse & repeat: Repeat these steps on the next node.