Data Migration

• Upgrading RavenDB 6.x and above to a higher version supports in-place data migration: exporting and re-importing the data are not needed.

• Create a backup of your data before upgrading, to avoid any data loss in case of unexpected issues.

• Find a migration guide for RavenDB 5.x and earlier versions here.

• In this article:

  • Migration to RavenDB 7.x from a lower version
    • Migration and NLog
    • Migration and HTTP compression
  • Migrating data into a sharded database

Migration to RavenDB 7.x from a lower version

Migration and NLog

Starting with version 7.0, RavenDB incorporates the NLog logging framework and writes all log data through it.

Logging settings applied in earlier RavenDB versions are respected by RavenDB 7.x, and logging should continue by these settings without interference after the migration.

If you want to use NLog-specific features, though, you will have to address a different set of settings that NLog requires.
Learn more here about migration and the new logging system..

Migration and HTTP compression

From RavenDB 7.0 on, the default HTTP compression algorithm is Zstd.
Earlier versions used Gzip.

• If your current server version is 6.0 or higher, the compression algorithm will present no problem while connecting it to RavenDB 7.0 or higher and migrating your data.

• If your current server version is 5.4 or earlier, attempting to connect it to a server that uses the Zstd compression algorithm will fail.
  For the connection to succeed, you need to:

  1. Temporarily switch the target version 7.x server compression algorithm to Gzip.
     Do this by defining a RAVEN_HTTP_COMPRESSION_ALGORITHM environment variable on the 7.x server machine and setting its value to Gzip, and restarting the server.
  2. Connect your current server to the new server and perform the migration.
  3. When the new server is updated, remove the environment variable and restart the server.

Migrating data into a sharded database

If you want to migrate your data to a sharded database (supported by RavenDB 6.0 and above),
please read the related article here.