Important: This documentation is about an older version. It's relevant only to the release noted, many of the features and functions have been updated or replaced. Please view the current version.

Upgrade Grafana

Upgrade to v8.1

Enterprise Open source

Upgrade to Grafana v8.1

We recommend that you upgrade Grafana often to stay current with the latest fixes and enhancements. Because Grafana upgrades are backward compatible, the upgrade process is straightforward, and dashboards and graphs will not change.

In addition to common tasks you should complete for all versions of Grafana, there might be additional upgrade tasks to complete for a version.

Note: There might be minor breaking changes in some releases. We outline these changes in the What’s New document for each release.

For versions of Grafana prior to v9.2, we published additional information in the Release Notes.

When available, we list all changes with links to pull requests or issues in the Changelog.

Note: When possible, we recommend that you test the Grafana upgrade process in a test or development environment.

Back up the Grafana database

Although Grafana automatically upgrades the database on startup, we recommend that you back up your Grafana database so that you can roll back to a previous version, if required.

SQLite

If you use SQLite, you only need to back up the grafana.db file. On Unix systems, the database file is usually located in /var/lib/grafana/.

If you are unsure which database you use and where it is stored, check the Grafana configuration file. If you installed Grafana to a custom location using a binary tar/zip, the database is usually located in <grafana_install_dir>/data.

MySQL

To back up or restore a MySQL Grafana database, run the following commands:

backup:
> mysqldump -u root -p[root_password] [grafana] > grafana_backup.sql

restore:
> mysql -u root -p grafana < grafana_backup.sql

Postgres

To back up or restore a Postgres Grafana database, run the following commands:

backup:
> pg_dump grafana > grafana_backup

restore:
> psql grafana < grafana_backup

Backup plugins

We recommend that you back up installed plugins before you upgrade Grafana so that you can roll back to a previous version of Grafana, if necessary.

Upgrade Grafana

The following sections provide instructions for how to upgrade Grafana based on your installation method.

Debian

To upgrade Grafana installed from a Debian package (.deb), complete the following steps:

In your current installation of Grafana, save your custom configuration changes to a file named <grafana_install_dir>/conf/custom.ini.
This enables you to upgrade Grafana without the risk of losing your configuration changes.
Download the latest version of Grafana.

Run the following dpkg -i command.

wget <debian package url>
sudo apt-get install -y adduser
sudo dpkg -i grafana_<version>_amd64.deb

APT repository

To upgrade Grafana installed from the Grafana Labs APT repository, complete the following steps:

In your current installation of Grafana, save your custom configuration changes to a file named <grafana_install_dir>/conf/custom.ini.
This enables you to upgrade Grafana without the risk of losing your configuration changes.

Run the following commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Grafana automatically updates when you run apt-get upgrade.

Binary .tar file

To upgrade Grafana installed from the binary .tar.gz package, complete the following steps:

In your current installation of Grafana, save your custom configuration changes to a file named <grafana_install_dir>/conf/custom.ini.
This enables you to upgrade Grafana without the risk of losing your configuration changes.
Download the binary .tar.gz package.
Extract the downloaded package and overwrite the existing files.

RPM or YUM

To upgrade Grafana installed using RPM or YUM complete the following steps:

In your current installation of Grafana, save your custom configuration changes to a file named <grafana_install_dir>/conf/custom.ini.
This enables you to upgrade Grafana without the risk of losing your configuration changes.
Perform one of the following steps based on your installation.
- If you downloaded an RPM package to install Grafana, then complete the steps documented in Install Grafana on Red Hat, RHEL, or Fedora or Install Grafana on SUSE or openSUSE to upgrade Grafana.
- If you used the Grafana YUM repository, run the following command:
  bash
```
sudo yum update grafana
```
- If you installed Grafana on openSUSE or SUSE, run the following command:
  bash
```
sudo zypper update
```

Docker

To upgrade Grafana running in a Docker container, complete the following steps:

In your current installation of Grafana, save your custom configuration changes to a file named <grafana_install_dir>/conf/custom.ini.
This enables you to upgrade Grafana without the risk of losing your configuration changes.

Run a commands similar to the following commands.

Note: This is an example. The parameters you enter depend on how you configured your Grafana container.

docker pull grafana/grafana
docker stop my-grafana-container
docker rm my-grafana-container
docker run -d --name=my-grafana-container --restart=always -v /var/lib/grafana:/var/lib/grafana grafana/grafana

Windows

To upgrade Grafana installed on Windows, complete the following steps:

In your current installation of Grafana, save your custom configuration changes to a file named <grafana_install_dir>/conf/custom.ini.
This enables you to upgrade Grafana without the risk of losing your configuration changes.
Download the Windows binary package.
Extract the contents of the package to the location in which you installed Grafana.
You can overwrite existing files and folders, when prompted.

Mac

To upgrade Grafana installed on Mac, complete the following steps:

In your current installation of Grafana, save your custom configuration changes to a file named <grafana_install_dir>/conf/custom.ini.
This enables you to upgrade Grafana without the risk of losing your configuration changes.
Download the Mac binary package.
Extract the contents of the package to the location in which you installed Grafana.
You can overwrite existing files and folders, when prompted.

Update Grafana plugins

After you upgrade Grafana, we recommend that you update all plugins because a new version of Grafana can make older plugins stop working properly.

Run the following command to update plugins:

grafana-cli plugins update-all

Technical notes

This section describes technical changes associated with this release of Grafana.

Use of unencrypted passwords for data sources no longer supported

As of Grafana v8.1, we no longer support unencrypted storage of passwords and basic auth passwords.

Note: Since Grafana v6.2, new or updated data sources store passwords and basic auth passwords encrypted. See upgrade note for more information. However, unencrypted passwords and basic auth passwords were also allowed.

To migrate to encrypted storage, follow the instructions from the v6.2 upgrade notes. You can also use a grafana-cli command to migrate all of your data sources to use encrypted storage of secrets. See migrate data and encrypt passwords for further instructions.