How to prepare your Confluence instance for cloud migration
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How to prepare your Confluence instance for cloud migration
Jimi Abbabiyi
26 November 2024
5 min read
Jimi Abbabiyi
26 November 2024
5 min read
How to prepare for migration
How to prepare for migration
Step 1: Hold workshops
Step 2: Analyse your instance
Step 3: Analyse apps/integrations
Step 4: Analyse users
Step 5: Gap analysis
Step 6: Pull together your strategy
Preparation tips
Set your Confluence Cloud migration up for success with our 6-step guide.
Unsure how to make the move to Confluence Cloud? We’re here to help! This guide will help you prepare your Confluence instance, making migration as smooth and easy as possible.
If you’ve already planned your migration, great! The next step is to action it: our guide to implementing your Cloud migration is here to help.
Note: Each Confluence instance is different. This guide serves as a general framework to support your process.
How to prepare for Confluence Cloud migration in 6 steps
Step 1: Hold workshops with your team
First, you need to hold workshops with important stakeholders (e.g. platform owners and project leads) to understand your organisation's current and future Confluence requirements.
For example, you will want to identify:
- Confluence usage
- The level of customisation (e.g. custom pages, third-party apps, custom permissions)
- Pain points
- Reporting needs
- Future requirements
- Any additional areas for analysis (if applicable)
These workshops will help you understand how Confluence is currently used and any underlying business requirements that should drive future usage patterns. With this information documented, it’s time to move on to analysis.
Step 2: Analyse your Confluence instance
Next, analyse your existing Confluence data (spaces, pages, attachments, permissions, etc.) to understand its size and complexity. This outcome informs your migration strategy. You’ll also want to identify data for cleanup or archival.
We recommend taking inventory of how many apps you have, the total size of attachments, and the number of site spaces and personal spaces in your instance:
- Number of apps
- Small: < 5
- Medium: 5 - 10
- Large: 11 - 15
- Enterprise: > 15
- Overall size of attachments
- Small: < 100 GB
- Medium: 101 GB - 300 GB
- Large: 301 GB - 500 GB
- Enterprise: > 501 GB
- Number of site spaces and personal spaces
- Small: < 50
- Medium: 51 - 150
- Large: 151 - 300
- Enterprise: > 300
This analysis will help you understand how long and complex the migration will be. For example, Small instances will take less time and planning, whereas instances closer to the Large or Enterprise end will be more involved.
Step 3: Analyse your apps and integrations
Review your current Confluence apps and integrations to determine their cloud compatibility and potential migration paths. This includes considering alternatives for apps without a direct migration path.
We recommend creating a table that shows the app name and vendor, whether it’s cloud-compatible, and further notes to give context or suggest alternatives (where needed).
For example:
| App Name | Vendor | Cloud Ready? | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Forms for Confluence | Kolekti | ✅ | Has more features in the Cloud |
Step 4: Analyse your Confluence users
The final element of the Assessment step is to analyse the existing users you want to migrate to Confluence Cloud.
Here are some steps to take:
- Identify usernames that aren’t compliant with a Cloud migration
- Create a list of Users and Groups set to migrate
- Assess security policies, such as password compliance
- Decide the strategy for user management in Atlassian Cloud (such as Atlassian Guard)
Step 5: Conduct a gap analysis
With the initial analysis done, you can now create a gap analysis report between the current and future state of your Confluence instance. The report will provide a breakdown of opportunities your team can work on.
During the gap analysis, you should:
- Define the current state of your Confluence instance
- Define the desired future state of your Confluence instance
- Identify the gaps between the two
- Develop an action plan to bridge the gaps
Here’s a short example:
| Area | Current state (Confluence Server) | Desired state (Confluence Cloud) | Identified gaps | Action plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| User management | Managed internally; manual user and group sync | Centralised user management, SSO, and integration with Atlassian Access | Limited native SSO and user sync in its current setup | Implement Atlassian Access for SSO and user provisioning |
| Performance | High performance with local data access and no network latency issues | Optimised performance on Cloud with acceptable latency | Potential latency increase due to cloud-hosted data | Test performance pre- and post-migration; plan for network optimisation |
Step 6: Pull together your migration strategy
Now, it’s time to create your migration plan. Your plan should include your migration approach (and its associated timeline), how you’ll migrate apps, and how you’ll migrate users.
1. Decide which migration approach to use
There are three approaches to migration:
| Migration approach | What is it? | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| Optimise and shift | Streamlines existing data and configurations before migrating. This reduces unnecessary content and optimises permissions to avoid clutter post-migration. | It requires more time upfront for clean-up but leads to a more efficient migration. |
| Lift and shift | A straightforward copy of the entire instance as-is, with few customisation adjustments prior to migration. | Typically faster but may carry over issues like outdated content or unaligned permissions. |
| Phased migration | A staggered approach where content is moved in phases (such as by teams or spaces) rather than in a single go. | Often requires more planning and coordination but can minimise downtime and ease the transition for large companies. |
Each approach has trade-offs, so select based on your business needs, time constraints, and desired outcomes.
2. Decide your app migration strategy
Apps may have different versions or features in the Cloud environment, and some may not be available at all. This step involves finding suitable replacements for critical apps, testing them in a sandbox environment, and documenting a migration strategy for each app.
3. Decide your user migration strategy
It’s important to ensure consistent user access and permissions from Server to Cloud. This
step includes auditing users and taking an inventory of inactive users, mapping user groups and permissions to the Cloud environment, and deciding whether to integrate Atlassian Access for single sign-on (SSO).
💡 Tip: Create a clear communication plan to share with users, providing instructions, training, and updates on the migration timeline.
Tips for preparing your Confluence instance
Cloud migration can be a tricky process, but these tips will help you prepare your Confluence instance for implementation.
- Define clear team roles: Give your team members clear roles and responsibilities, specifying who will manage tasks like user migration, app testing, data integrity checks, and overall quality control.
- Set up regular meetings: By setting up frequent, dedicated time with your team, you can keep everyone on track and help to solve issues as soon as they arise.
- Create a migration roadmap (and regularly review it): You’ll want to make adjustments as you become more aware of your needs and expectations. For example, if your Confluence instance is larger than expected, you’ll want to build in extra time.
- Schedule migration for a weekend: For larger migrations that are likely to take over four hours, it’s best to migrate when fewer users are online, such as on a weekend.
Conclusion
As you plan your migration, keep these steps in mind to minimise disruptions and maximise the benefits of moving to the cloud. If you’re ready to put your plan into action, take a look at the second of our two-part guide and learn how to implement your Confluence migration plan.
Ready to migrate to Confluence Cloud?
Browse our Migration Hub to help you effortlessly make the move to the cloud.
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Written by
Jimi Abbabiyi
Senior Product Marketing Manager
With over 10 years in Product Marketing and the longest-serving member of Kolekti's marketing team, Jimi is a force to be reckoned with. Jimi excels at go-to-market planning, digital marketing, and line management across the full product life cycle.
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