This comprehensive guide on Jira Cloud Migration Assistant will help you in migrating Project Data from Jira On-Prem Server to Jira Cloud, including migration steps, project permissions, etc:
Cloud Migration Assistants for Jira and Confluence are available as free apps from the Atlassian Marketplace.
In this article, we will look at how do we migrate project data from the Jira server to Jira Cloud. For this, we will use the Jira Cloud Migration Assistant to migrate.
The app will help you migrate projects, users, groups, app data from Jira and Jira Service Management on the server to the cloud. The migration assistant will add the data completely to your cloud site and will not overwrite any existing data.
Table of Contents:
Jira Cloud Migration Assistant – Migrating Project Data
What gets migrated with the Jira 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 to move 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, accessibility.
- Performance issues, downtimes, and more.
Today, cloud solutions have evolved a lot and have offered 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.
Install Jira Cloud Migration Assistant app
You can install the app from Atlassian Marketplace.
Once installed, it will be listed in the Manage Apps of your Jira server instance.
Also Read => A Comprehensive Guide to Atlassian Confluence Tutorial
Jira Cloud Migration Steps
To begin the migration, follow these steps:
- Go to Jira Settings -> System.
- In the left panel, locate the Import and Export category, and select Migrate to the cloud. The home screen comes up like the image shown below.
- The home page displays 3 stages. 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 in your server or data center instance will be listed and you can decide on whether they are needed in the cloud post-migration.
Click on Done.
Click on the next step Prepare Your Apps. Here you will need to install the app 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).
Click on Confirm. Choose a destination cloud site and click on Continue.
The apps to be installed in the cloud are listed. Click on Install App for each of the entries.
Each of the app’s installed statuses are shown after each installation.
The status of each app is now changed to Installed in the cloud.
Once installed, click on Continue. On the below screen, you may need to approve the policy to continue.
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 fields, custom statuses, etc.) and check if there are any errors during migration.
On the screen shown below, click on Connect to cloud.
Provide your name 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 migration options and the screen below will come up.
Plans migrate first and then the project data. On this page, select Advanced Roadmap Plans if created, or else click Skip Plans.
Click Select under Projects to migrate the projects in Jira. From the list of projects, select the ones that you want to migrate.
Click Add to migration once you have selected the projects. It is preferable to do phase-wise migration and not select all the projects. For example, some high-priority projects can be migrated upfront and so on in different phases accordingly.
Next, click select under Users and Groups. Select the options as shown below to migrate all users and groups from our Jira server.
In the above screen, all the users of Jira are migrated to the cloud.
>>To learn about how users and groups are migrated, please visit here.
Also Read =>> Most Popular Data Migration Tools
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 it has to be in sync with the directory on the cloud site. For example, SSO can authenticate through your organization’s identity provide like Azure AD or Okta. Access to Atlassian products will need to be given even though the user can log in using SSO.
Click on Select under Apps. The apps that we marked as Needed in the cloud will be migrated to the Jira cloud using the migration assistant. Below, we will migrate all 2 apps chosen and installed on the cloud site.
Click on Apply Changes.
Click on Check for errors to continue.
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 project being migrated already pre-exists on the cloud site or not.
If everything looks fine, then click on Run.
Once the migration is complete you can view the data on your cloud site. If there are customizations done on your server or data center instance of Jira, you can look at the same whether it is visible or not on the cloud site along with attachments being migrated.
Launch your cloud site and visit the project to see the data migrated.
With the data migrated, you can look at some of the customizations done and which are visible on the cloud site. For example, attachments are migrated, and custom fields & statuses are also migrated.
The test case created using the Zephyr Squad app is also migrated.
Jira Cloud User Management
To provide access to users and groups to Jira 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 Jira.
Click on Jira-software-users and add users.
Similarly, to add users as Jira Administrators, go to Manage access for Jira Administration in the Products tab.
Click on the Jira-administrators group to add users.
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 your identity provider only, which will then automatically provide access to the product.
Jira Cloud Project 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 Jira project. As a Jira administrator, go to the Project settings -> People.
Click on Add people to the appropriate role.
Click on Add.
Jira Cloud Pricing
Jira Cloud comes with four plans with monthly and yearly billing. The four plans are Free, Standard, Premium, and Enterprise. Typically, organizations need enhanced security, including a single sign-on, to go with the Enterprise plan or Premium with Atlassian access.
Brief pricing plan for 10 users yearly plan
| Free | Standard | Premium | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| $0 Free for 10 users | $750 | $1450 | Contact Atlassian @ Contact Atlassian for Enterprise Solutions | Atlassian |
=>> Click here for more information on pricing for each plan.
Conclusion
In this short article, we have seen the procedure to migrate on-prem project data to Jira Cloud using the Jira Cloud Migration Assistant. This looks pretty much like a straightforward and neat migration.
Suggested Reading =>> Open Source and Commercial JIRA Alternatives/Competitor
For those doing the migration for the first time, we 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.