Through this tutorial, we will guide you on how to migrate Space Content from Confluence On-Prem Server to Confluence Cloud:
Cloud Migration Assistants for Jira and Confluence are available as free apps from the Atlassian Marketplace.
In this article, we will learn how to migrate project data from Confluence Server to Confluence Cloud. For this, we will use the Confluence Cloud Migration Assistant to migrate.
The app will help to migrate space content, users, groups, pages, page history, attachments, and app data from the Confluence server to the Confluence cloud. The migration assistant will add the data completely to your cloud site and will not overwrite any existing data.
Table of Contents:
Introduction to Confluence Cloud Migration
What gets migrated with the Confluence Cloud Migration Assistant is listed here.
Why Move to Atlassian Cloud
Most of the organizations have invested in on-prem servers for the most widely used software for their development, be it Atlassian, GitHub Enterprise, JFrog Artifactory, SonarQube, etc. This definitely makes sense, as teams within their organization would have some reservations internally about moving data to the cloud, more so from a security point of view.
However, these on-prem servers have their own challenges in terms of the following:
- Investment and maintenance of the infra needed to host software.
- With new releases of the software, the Operating System needs to be upgraded.
- Regular patching of the servers.
- Networking issues and accessibility.
- Performance issues, downtimes, and more.
Today, cloud solutions have evolved a lot and offer peace of mind from the above issues. Organizations today are investing more in cloud solutions and have seen features coming early in cloud releases than in on-prem.
Moving to Atlassian cloud offers the following benefits: True for any cloud solution.
- Freedom from maintenance.
- Better and enhanced security (including integration with your organization’s Active Directory).
- Reliable and easier to manage.
- Ways to access cloud solutions only from within the organization’s managed devices.
- Improved speed, performance, and accessibility.
- Better developer experience.
Suggested Reading =>> Atlassian Confluence Tutorial for Beginners
Install the Confluence Cloud Migration Assistant App
The app can be installed from the Atlassian Marketplace.
Once installed, it will be listed in the Manage Apps of your Confluence server instance.
Supported versions to use the migration assistant are Confluence Server or Data Center version 5.10.0 and later. If lower versions of Confluence are being used, then you will need to upgrade to a supported version to use the migration assistant.
Recommended Reading => Most Popular Confluence Alternatives You Must Know
Confluence Cloud Migration Steps
To begin the Migration, follow these steps:
#1) Go to Confluence Settings.
#2) In the left panel, locate the Atlassian Cloud category and select Migration Assistant.
*#3) The home screen comes up.
#4) The home page displays 3 stages.
- Assess Your Apps
- Prepare Your Apps
- Migrate Your Data
#5) The first step is to Assess your apps. Click on the first option.
During migration, the first step is typically to assess the compatibility of the app on the cloud and install the same on the cloud. The cloud licenses are separate and need to be procured. The apps that you have on your server or data center instance will be listed and you can decide on whether they need to be used on the cloud site post-migration.
These are the plugins in case you have procured and installed them in your confluence on-prem instance. In this case, there are no apps listed.
Click on Done.
Click on the next step Prepare Your Apps. If your instance has any apps installed, then you would need to install the apps on the cloud site.
Click Choose cloud site if you already have the site. Click on Continue.
Enter the From (Server URL) and To (Cloud site details).
Choose the destination cloud site, select the checkbox ‘Allow Atlassian to access migration data’. Click on Confirm.
Click on Continue.
The apps to be installed in the cloud are listed. Click on Install App for each of the entries.
If there is none to install, then click on Continue.
If an app needs to be installed, then the status of each app will be changed to Installed in the cloud. Click on Done.
Once the app is assessed and installed on the cloud, the final step is to Migrate your data. Click on option 3 listed.
Click on Create a new migration to create a migration plan which will help to document the migration options (migrate attachments, custom templates, etc.) and check if there are any errors during migration.
As shown on the below screen, click on Connect to cloud.
Provide a name for the migration plan and choose the destination cloud site.
Note: You will have to be the Admin for both server and cloud sites to connect.
Click on Choose what to migrate and the screen below comes up.
Click on Next.
Choose Spaces to migrate. From the list of spaces, select the ones that you want to migrate.
Click Add to migration once you have selected the spaces. It is preferable to do phase-wise migration and not select all the projects. For example, some high-priority spaces can be migrated upfront and so on in different phases accordingly.
Click on Review migration. This checks for the version of the cloud migration assistant, user, and group data correctness, whether they have a unique email address, and also if the space being migrated already pre-exists in the cloud site or not.
Select Run now.
Users typically migrate using their email addresses. Hence, all user accounts and their email addresses must be validated before migrating the same to the cloud.
If you are using Active Directory, then typically users and groups have to be in sync with the directory on the cloud site.
For example, SAML-based Single Sign-On can authenticate through your organization’s identity provider, such as Azure AD or Okta. Access to Atlassian products will need to be given even though the user can log in using SSO.
The feature of configuring SSO is available with the Atlassian Access feature, which can be used with your cloud site. With the Enterprise plan, this comes built-in.
Once the migration is completed, you can view the data on your cloud site. If there are customizations done on your server or data center instance of Confluence, you can look at the same whether it is visible or not in the cloud site along with attachments being migrated.
Launch your cloud site and visit the project to see the data migrated. Both the spaces selected for migration have migrated to the cloud.
With the data migrated, you can look at some customizations if done and which are visible on the cloud site.
Also Read => List of the TOP Cloud Monitoring Tools to Look For
Confluence Cloud User Management
To provide access to users and groups to Confluence cloud, as a cloud org admin you can navigate to Settings => User Management
Go to the Products tab and click on Manage Access next to Confluence.
Click on the Confluence-users group and add members to the group. Similarly, add users to the Confluence Administrators group.
If there is a single sign-on configured, then the users and groups will be synced from your identity providers, like Azure AD or Okta. In this case, the Add groups button will be disabled and you will need to add users or groups from the identity provider only, which will then automatically provide access to the product.
Confluence Cloud Space Permissions
As users and groups are provided access to the product, as in the above section, you will still need to provide access to the confluence space. As a confluence administrator, go to Space Settings => Space Permissions.
Click on Edit Permissions under Individual Users and provide permissions.
Confluence Cloud Pricing
Confluence Cloud comes with four plans with monthly and yearly billing. The four plans include Free, Standard, Premium, and Enterprise. Typically, organizations need enhanced security, including single sign-on goes with Enterprise plan or Premium with Atlassian access.
A brief pricing plan for 10 users yearly plan is listed below:
| Free | Standard | Premium | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| $0 Free for 10 users | $550 | $1050 | Contact Atlassian @ Contact Atlassian for Enterprise Solutions | Atlassian |
For more information on pricing for each plan and other user slabs, click here.
Conclusion
In this article, we saw the procedure to migrate on-prem space data (Users, Groups, Pages, Page history, Attachments, App data, etc.) to Confluence Cloud using the Confluence Cloud Migration Assistant. This looks pretty much like a straightforward and neat migration.
For those doing the migration for the first time, I would suggest that you practice the migration using test servers first and then proceed with migrating the production project data. This will help to unearth any challenges during the migration.