Several questions about the migration process
Asked by Martin Brandenburg:

Hello,

we plan two migrate about two spaces within our Confluence Server (self-hosted) to a new Confluence cloud (which is not existing yet). It will only have about 10 users, for now.

I have read the support articles. Nevertheless, I have four questions (I already wrote some of them to the support, but they pointed me to this forum instead):

1) When we migrate the spaces and their pages, are the associated page attachments migrated as well?

2) I have read that one can only migrate zero or all users. Since we definitely do not want to migrate all users, we will probably have to migrate zero users. So it is my understanding that the best practice is to create users in the new Confluence Cloud after the migration of the pages? But these users then have no connection to the migrated sites (like version/edit history, comments), correct? Or is there a different way to maintain this connection?

3) Is it possible to migrate personal channels (associated to the users) as well?  

4) The new Confluence instance is for an organization which is currently still part of our organization, which is an NGO. But it will be independent in the future. There are NGO discounts for Confluence Cloud. Is it possible, therefore, to use our current NGO discount for this new Confliuence instance as well?

Thanks a lot!


Answers:
author: Sachin
body: Hello Martin,  

I have mostly done confluence server to server migrations, but I do know that the migrations from server --\> cloud are much easier using [Confluence Cloud Migration Assistant](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1219672/confluence-cloud-migration-assistant)  

I would suggest you to test this on your sandbox instance if you can before performing it on a production server, below are my answers to your questions :   

1. Yes, all the associated page attachments will be migrated as well

2. I would suggest you to migrate all the users and then disable them after the migration

3. To migrate personal spaces you need to follow below steps on your server  
- Move your personal space to a new Site Space (sachin to global_space)  
- After migration move it back to your personal space  
Which means have to ask other users to do the same if you do not have a way to SU as the user

4. You mentioned you have contacted Atlassian support already, so I hope they will help you on that. Request Atlassian server team to route your existing ticket to the Cloud Support team.   

Best,  
Sachin.

comments: author: Martin Brandenburg
body: Hi Sachin,

thanks a lot for your reply. It was very helpful. I accepted it right away, but only now have realized that I have a further question: does the migration of users mean that they don't exist anymore in the original Confluence instance? Or are they copied? And for that matter, does the same hold for the pages? In my understanding, migration means moving and excludes copying, but in that case moving all users out of our Confluence instance would be a huge mistake. I appreciate your answer!

Cheers, Martin


author: Sachin
body: Hello Martin,

Glad my answer was helpful, how do you do your user management at the moment ?? If you use something like AD groups then I would suggest you to have the AD groups and users ready on the target instance before doing the migration so you won't have any issues permission wise and all the content will be intact to those users!   

I don't think confluence would create users for you upon a space import, you need to make sure the users are available on your target instance, if you don't then it is gonna show as "unknown user(Martin)" on the page history!

Best,  
Sachin.


author: Martin Brandenburg
body: Hi Sachin,

thanks again for your help!

I am using the Confluence internal directory. We only will need to migrate about 10 users. Probably this is quite small compared to other migrations.

I didn't know that I have to create the users before the migration. The migration guideline indicated that it is optional: <https://confluence.atlassian.com/confcloud/cloud-migration-assistant-for-confluence-959303217.html> -\> "If your users already exist in cloud".

Assuming this is correct though, what user fields have to be the same in the other instance? I assume name and e-mail address?  

Best,  
Martin


author: Sachin
body: If it's just 10users I would create them prior to the migration and i would fill all the fields, email, username and first and last name!


author: Martin Brandenburg
body: Alright. If I understand correctly, using this approach, it means that all other users which have been working on the migrated pages are not visible as proper users anymore. In this respect, I would prefer your solution mentioned in the first answer: " I would suggest you to migrate all the users and then disable them after the migration". This still works, right? :) In the migration assistant one presumably select to migrate all users.


author: Sachin
body: Yes, all the other users will show as "unknown user(username)". Correct, that will still work! I would also recommend you to test this on a sandbox if you can while documenting each step.


Tags: cloud

confluence-cloud

migration