Alternative method of upgrading JIRA

This document describes an alternative method of upgrading JIRA: the "Connect JIRA to a copy of your old database" method. With this method, you take a copy of your existing JIRA database and configure the new JIRA to use the copied database. When you first start up the new JIRA, it will upgrade the database to the structure needed for the new JIRA version.

The "Connect JIRA to a copy of your old database" method can be useful for extremely large installations, where the recommended method of "XML backup/restore" would take too long — but please also note that you may be able to get significantly better performance by Increasing JIRA Memory temporarily, and using the recommended method.

The "Connect JIRA to a copy of your old database" method has the following restrictions:

• JIRA may not be able to automatically update the database if you connect a copy of your old database to your new JIRA, if there have been significant changes to the database scheme between versions. This currently applies for upgrades from JIRA 3.6.x or older to JIRA 3.7 or later. See this page for details.
• You may miss out on any performance improvements that we have added to the database between versions. In particular, if we have added new database indexes between versions, these indexes will not be applied if you connect your new version of JIRA to a copy of your old database. You can vote for adding database indices automatically if you'd like this feature to be added to the product. (In practice, there have been very few indexes added through JIRA's lifetime.)

The "Connect JIRA to a copy of your old database" method

Follow the recommended method of upgrading JIRA, with the following exceptions:

• Instead of connecting your new JIRA instance to a new, empty database, take a copy of your existing database and connect your new JIRA instance to the copy. Follow these steps to create a copy of your existing database:
  1. Make your existing JIRA read-only or shutdown your existing JIRA, so that users cannot make changes until the upgrade is complete. If you do not do this, you will lose any updates that users make from this point until the upgrade is complete.
  2. Use the vendor's tools for your database to make a copy of your existing JIRA database. Consult your database administrator if you need help to do this.
  3. Check your version of JIRA. If you are upgrading from 3.6.5 (or earlier) to 3.7 or later, JIRA will not be able to update your database automatically when you start the new instance. This is due to the large number of database changes between 3.6.5 and 3.7. You will need to manually upgrade your copied database to the 3.7 schema instead.

Starting your new JIRA instance will automatically update your new/copied database.