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Upgrade Grafana

Upgrade to v12.1

Enterprise Open source

Upgrade to Grafana v12.1

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 breaking changes in some releases. We outline all these changes in the What’s New document.

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 Grafana

This topic explains how to back up a local Grafana deployment, including configuration, plugin data, and the Grafana database.

Back up the Grafana configuration file

Copy Grafana configuration files that you might have modified in your Grafana deployment to a backup directory.

The Grafana configuration files are located in the following directories:

Default configuration: $WORKING_DIR/defaults.ini (Don’t change this file)
Custom configuration: $WORKING_DIR/custom.ini

For more information on where to find configuration files, refer to Configuration file location.

Note
If you installed Grafana using the deb or rpm packages, then your configuration file is located at /etc/grafana/grafana.ini. This path is specified in the Grafana init.d script using --config file parameter.

Back up plugin data

Installing plugins in Grafana creates a folder for each plugin with its associated files and data. Copy all files and folders recursively from this location to your backup repository.

The Grafana plugin files are located in the following directories:

Default location for plugins in a binary or source installation: $WORKING_DIR/data/plugins
Default location for plugins in a deb or rpm package: /var/lib/grafana/plugins. This path is specified in the Grafana init.d script using --config file parameter.

Back up the Grafana database

We recommend that you back up your Grafana database so that you can roll back to a previous version, if required.

SQLite

The default Grafana database is SQLite, which stores its data in a single file on disk. To back up this file, copy it to your backup repository.

Note
To ensure data integrity, shut down your Grafana service before backing up the SQLite database.

The SQLite database file is located in one of the following directories:

Default location for SQLite data in a binary or source installation: $WORKING_DIR/data/grafana.db
Default location for SQLite data in a deb or rpm package: /var/lib/grafana/grafana.db. This path is specified in the Grafana init.d script using --config file parameter.

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

Upgrade Grafana

The following sections provide instructions for how to upgrade Grafana based on your installation method. For more information on where to find configuration files, refer to Configuration file location.

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>/grafana.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>/grafana.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 the custom configuration file, custom.ini or grafana.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>/grafana.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:

Use Grafana environment variables to save your custom configurations; this is the recommended method. Alternatively, you can view your configuration files manually by accessing the deployed container.
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 the custom configuration file, 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

PostgreSQL annotation table migration

Plan for increased disk usage when upgrading from Grafana v11.x

Upgrading from Grafana v11.x to Grafana v12.x triggers a full-table rewrite of the PostgreSQL annotation table. The migration populates the new dashboard_uid column, which causes PostgreSQL to rewrite the entire table and rebuild its indexes.

Environments with large annotation datasets can experience significant temporary disk usage increase, which may lead to:

Rapid disk consumption on the PostgreSQL data volume
Database migration failures (for example, “could not extend file: No space left on device”)
Grafana startup failures
Extended downtime during the upgrade process

How do I know if I’m affected?

You’re affected if you’re upgrading from Grafana v11.x to v12.x and you have a large annotation table in your PostgreSQL database.

To check your annotation table size, connect to your PostgreSQL database and run the following query:

SELECT
    pg_size_pretty(pg_relation_size('annotation'))       AS table_size,
    pg_size_pretty(pg_indexes_size('annotation'))        AS indexes_size,
    pg_size_pretty(pg_total_relation_size('annotation')) AS total_size;

If your total size is several gigabytes or more, you should plan accordingly before upgrading.

What should I do before upgrading?

Before you upgrade, take the following steps:

Verify available disk space: Ensure you have at least 2-3 times the current annotation table size available as free disk space on your PostgreSQL data volume.
Review your annotation data: Consider whether you need to retain all historical annotations.
Clean up old annotations (optional): If you have annotations you don’t need, remove them before upgrading.
Back up your database: Always back up your Grafana database before performing an upgrade. For more information, refer to Back up Grafana.

What should I do after upgrading?

After successfully upgrading to Grafana v12.x, you can reclaim disk space by running a VACUUM FULL operation on the annotation table during a maintenance window: