Lifecycle / upgrades of Managed Grafana?

Question

I haven't yet found this in the documentation, so I'm asking it here:

What are the principles of upgrading Grafana versions in Azure Managed Grafana?

Yes, I understand that this is a managed service, and constant upgrades in the sense of security upgrades are being applied. That much is clear.

But the most important question here is: how is the upgrading to the next Major version being handled? I couldn't find this anywhere. I ask this because from my experience hopping from one major version to another can introduce breaking changes in dashboards. As is with all software, controlling and understanding the upgrade process is important. We do not want to wake up one morning and notice that our dozens of dashboards are all broken due to an upgrade we knew nothing about.

Honestly this should be a page of its own in the product documentation.

Answer 1

Hello Saarivirta, Jussi, Azure Managed Grafana is a fully managed service, meaning Microsoft takes care of updates and version upgrades automatically. Users do not have control over the specific Grafana version running at any given time. When a major version upgrade is planned, such as from Grafana 9 to Grafana 10, users are notified in advance. For instance, Grafana version 9 was retired on August 31, 2024, and users were advised to upgrade to Grafana version 10 before that date. If users did not upgrade manually, their workspaces were automatically migrated to Grafana version 10 in September 2024. Users are encouraged to create a new Managed Grafana instance with the new version and migrate their dashboards over. This approach helps in managing and mitigating any breaking changes that might occur due to the upgrade. If you face any issues during the upgrade process, you can always create a support ticket with Microsoft. So, until and unless you have totally ignored the advisory notifications, you wouldn't really have to wake up one morning and notice all your dashboards being broken due to an upgrade.

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