Confluence upgrade with expired licence
Asked by Timothy Fridey:

Can I upgrade Confluence to a newer version that was released before our licence expired?  

The upgrade guide says:  

1. Confirm that your license support period is still valid before you try to upgrade.  
2. If your current license has expired but you have a new license with you, please update your license in Confluence before performing the upgrade.  
If you forget to do this and your license has expired, you will receive errors during the upgrade process.  

But why shouldn't I be able to upgrade to a version that was released when our licence was valid?  

Note: We only need to upgrade so that we can migrate one wiki into anouther.


Answers:
author: Michael S
body: You're able to upgrade to any version that was released before your license expired. One thing to be aware of if you're upgrading to a version pre 2.10.4 is that we updated a bunch of our old versions to remove 3rd party code, the license can sometimes be tripped up on this as technically they may have been released after your license expired (see: [http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/ArchiveConfluenceDownloads.jspa](http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/ArchiveConfluenceDownloads.jspa "Downloads archive")).

If this is the case for you, you're best off creating an evaluation license for the upgrade.

Cheers,  
Michael

comments: author: Richard A. Ehlinger
body: Hey Michael, So can I get an evaluation license for my issue(see the rest of this thread? Or is it as Nic says, it's ok to upgrade with an expired license as long as it was after 13 March 2014(and it was), and so don't worry about? Thanks, Rick


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: Yes, in theory, you should, but as the manual says, it does throw errors into the log file.

As you're only using it temporarily though, I'd simply use a developer license from the Confluence you are moving into (assuming that is licensed? If not, then you could try an evaluation license)


author: Richard A. Ehlinger
body: Here is my issue. I have a clustered install of 4.3.1. The license expired on June 30th 2015. Atlassian will not give me either a temporary license nor sell me a clustered license, but says I must buy Data Center license, as this is the new cluster software. That's fine. But I am in the middle of an upgrade from 4.3.1 to 5.4.4(the old cluster software). I have already upgraded development and staging environments to 5.4.4 when the license was still valid. Can I finish my upgrade to 5.4.4 in production with an expired license?

comments: author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: Was your licence valid after 13th March 2014?If it was, then the answer is "yes", you can do the upgrade.


author: Richard A. Ehlinger
body: Thanks Nic. It was valid until June 30th, 2015. The thing that worries me are the errors in the log files. For those of us who know how to turn logging on and off, more and less, in the GUI, it's better to keep the chaff minimal. But I'd hate like hell to not have enough logging and miss some critical fact. I do have a qual instance that is still 4.3.1, so I will do the upgrade there first and then prepare for production.


author: Jim Birch
body: If you only need a couple of users, buy a 10 user license for $10.

As a sweetener, the $10 is donated to Room to Read :)