Migration Sonatype Nexus 2 to Nexus 3

I'd like to share my experience with migration Sonatype Nexus 2 to Nexus 3.

Starting Point

I used two Nexus instances:

  • A Nexus 2 Instance for Maven Repositories (2.13)
  • A Nexus 3 Instance for Bower Repositories (3.0.1)

Both instances had several types of repositories (host, proxy, group). The reason for this set up was that Sonatype recommended not to use Nexus 3 (pre 3.1) for Maven repositories and Nexus 2 doesn't support Bower repositories.

Migration Path

  1. Update Nexus 2 instance to version 2.14.1 (Update Guide)
  2. Update Nexus 3 Instance to version 3.1 (Update Guide ). It's important that you migrate to the new working directory layout.
  3. Follow the migration step for upgrading from version 2 to version 3 (Update Guide).
    • My scenario was Nexus 2 and Nexus 3 running on the same system.
    • I selected as Upgrade Method "File system copy"
    • I chose that only "repository configuration content" has to migrate.
  4. After a successful migration I had to adjust some configuration in Nexus and in the system that use Nexus:
    • Setup in Nexus 3 a new user for deploying artifacts.
    • Adjust URL to the repositories in Jenkins, Maven settings and deployment scripts.