Moving the Confluence database
Asked by Jacob Saaby Nielsen:

Hi guys,

this is actually not a production issue (yet), but a request for knowledge.

Challenge: We need to move the Confluence database from one server to another. Everywhere I see, I see guides for migrating from one database to another, which isn't exactly what I had in mind.

Is it possible to simply move the database from one MS SQL server to another, change something in an XML file somewhere, and then be good to go ?

What's the procedure for doing that ?

I've indicated v4.2, but it's no problem to spend some time upgrading to the latest version before we move, if that makes things easier.

Thanks in advance :)

Best regards

Jacob


Answers:
author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: Yes, if you are NOT changing the type of database and you are NOT changing the application, you can simply take an entire database, copy it to another server and use it without having to do any more work.

Your steps should be simple, as you've already started to suspect:

1. Shut down Confluence
2. Copy the database to the new server
3. Work out the new connection settings
4. Put the new settings in to Confluence (I'm not familiar with 4.x yet, but I believe it's in an xml file in the "confluence home directory" on the application server)
5. Restart Confluence

You won't even need to worry about re-indexing or anything difficult like that.

comments: author: Chung Park Chan
body: Look for *confluence.cfg.xml*file in the Confluence Home Directory


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: Ah, that's the one! Thanks!


author: Jacob Saaby Nielsen
body: Thanks for the answer Nic - then things are as I suspected :)


author: David Buttrick
body: This is exactly what I tried to do, and it did not work.

The Jira plugin failed, and reported that it was not licensed.

I tried re-entering the Confluence License, but no dice.

Rolling back to my old database server was easy though, and worked without a hitch.

How should I troubleshoot this?

This weekend I'm going to to give this another shot, after upgrading Confluence to 4.3

I will backup my Confluence db, and restore it to my new server, and edit the conflunce config file with the proper connection string.

What logs should I collect if I have problems?

Thanks


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: There should be a file like "atlassian-confluence.log" in the logs directory under the confluence "home" directory. That's worth a read.

You can also simply try the upgrade again - sometimes, it can be recovered by stopping and starting the application, although it's unlikely (on the other hand, that will give you an error in the logs as well)


author: TMP
body: Following the instructions that Nic provided above didn't work. Although the config file was updated properly while the Confluence service was stopped, the web site wouldn't respond. Was forced to do a fresh install pointing to a blank shell database on the destination server and then restore the backed up data.  

One oversight that may have been an issue was the JVM was not restarted. I don't know if this would have fixed the issue.

comments: author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: Mmm, the instructions I gave do say "shut down confluence" which does mean restarting the JVM


Tags: database

migration

ms-sql

sql