Moving your Atlassian applications from Server to Cloud is no small endeavor, but the ROI of moving to Cloud is worthwhile for many of our clients. In this article, we explore the process for migrating Jira and Confluence to Cloud, based on our experience helping several large organizations successfully migrate to Cloud. We’ll share answers to commonly asked questions from several client discussions.
General Atlassian Cloud Migration Tips
1. When is the best time to perform a migration?
The best time to migrate your Atlassian applications from Server to Cloud depends on your particular business. Organizations should plan a migration for the time that would be least disruptive to business continuity. Just as the MLB wouldn’t roll out technical changes during the World Series, you aren’t going to plan a migration during your busy season.
So when is your offseason? A lot of businesses are shut down over the Christmas/New Year break and find that to be the best time to perform the cloud migration. For others, it’s the busiest time. We suggest you look at the data in Jira to see when the least number of Jira tickets are created. Or look in Confluence to see when pageviews are the lowest.
For a realistic estimate of migration duration, perform multiple test migrations in a sandbox environment. These migrations will provide the amount of time needed to migrate the data, which will help you decide whether a weekend is enough for migration.
2. Do we need to migrate Jira before Confluence?
When migrating both Jira and Confluence to Cloud, we recommend importing Jira first, particularly when using Atlassian Access for advanced user management features. Otherwise, you might encounter user management issues.
3. How can we redirect old links after a migration?
You can avoid huge post-migration headaches and improve the experience for users by using a proxy to redirect old links to new URLs. We’re sharing a sample configuration below. The purpose of this configuration is to demonstrate the ease of set-up.
Please note that the specifics in this section will depend on your Server deployment details.
Apache with mod_rewrite
RewriteEngine on # Jira RewriteRule "^(.*)$" "https://<Site Name>.atlassian.net/$1" [R,L] # Confluence RewriteRule "^(.*)$" "https://<Site Name>.atlassian.net/wiki/$1" [R,L]
Apache with RedirectMatch
# Jira RedirectMatch "^(.*)$" "https://<Site Name>.atlassian.net/$1" # Confluence RedirectMatch "^(.*)$" "https://<Site Name>.atlassian.net/wiki/$1"
Note that this will fix most of the URLs but not all of them. Some links use unique IDs that can change with the migration.
4. What should we do if the information is missing after migration?
If you need to redo the import while testing, it’s time for a reset. Cleaning up information by hand can be a huge pain and can introduce new variables, making it harder to reproduce the migration state later. If you encounter this, the best thing to do is to reset Confluence or Jira entirely. Here’s how to reset and delete all data from your Cloud site.
Don’t forget to create a site backup before you do this. We also recommend using a sandbox environment for all the tests. This ensures that production isn’t impacted in case you need to clean the environment due to a failed migration attempt.
Jira and Confluence Cloud Migration Tips
1. When should we use the Jira Migration Assistant?
Since we first published this article a few years ago, Atlassian has released the handy Jira Cloud Migration Assistant to handle migration in many use cases. Atlassian provides plenty of documentation about all the methods for cloud migration — including working with a partner like us to take care of it for you.
Keep in mind that Jira Cloud Migration Assistant doesn’t migrate every piece of information. You can learn about what gets migrated and what doesn’t here.
Also, note that Jira Cloud Site Import will be discontinued by Atlassian. Refer to Atlassian’s official documentation for further details.
2. How do we avoid security issues during a Jira migration?
The security of user info, project contents, dashboard, filters, and agile boards in a Server deployment is often provided in part by Jira running inside of your corporate network. When you migrate to Cloud, here are a few tips to ensure past security issues don’t come back to bite you:
- Check all of your permission schemes to ensure that none of them grant access to Group: Anyone.
- Check your “Browse Users” global permission to ensure this is locked down.
- Make sure that you are not leaking data via public dashboards, filters, or agile boards by running this query before exporting your data. This query will require that people at least authenticate before seeing these assets.
3. What is the Confluence Cloud Migration Assistant?
Like Jira, Confluence now offers a Migration Assistant to make moving to Cloud a lot easier. The main benefit is that it does the migration on a Space-by-Space basis. If everything except for one Space works, the effort required to continue your work is drastically lower than doing a full reimport.
But, as mentioned above, if you find you have to redo the import while testing, it’s time for a reset. If you end up with broken macros, you can fix these by going here and running the Jira Macro Repair tool: https://<SITENAME>.atlassian.net/wiki/admin/jim-validator/view.action
Starting on the Migration Journey
We hope this information provides useful knowledge to make your Atlassian Cloud migration successful. Remember, it’s critical not to rush into a migration. A well-structured plan will save you considerable resources during the execution phase of migration.
As an official Platinum Enterprise Solution and Cloud Specialization partner for Atlassian, Modus Create has helped several Fortune 500 companies migrate their Jira and Confluence instances to the cloud. Contact us to find out how we can help you. You can also access our free checklist for planning an Atlassian cloud migration.
