Installation on Grafana Labs

Requirements

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 12:26:57 +0000

Grafana requirements

This page lists the minimum hardware and software requirements to install Grafana.

To run Grafana, you must have a supported operating system, hardware that meets or exceeds minimum requirements, a supported database, and a supported browser.

Grafana uses other open source software. Refer to package.json for a complete list.

Supported operating systems

The following operating systems are supported for Grafana installation:

Installation of Grafana on other operating systems is possible, but it is neither recommended nor supported.

Hardware recommendations

Grafana does not use a lot of resources and is very lightweight in use of memory and CPU.

Minimum recommended memory: 255 MB Minimum recommended CPU: 1

Some features might require more memory or CPUs. Features require more resources include:

Supported databases

Grafana requires a database to store its configuration data, such as users, data sources, and dashboards. The exact requirements depend on the size of the Grafana installation and features used.

Grafana supports the following databases:

SQLite
MySQL
PostgreSQL

By default, Grafana installs with and uses SQLite, which is an embedded database stored in the Grafana installation location.

Note: PostgreSQL versions 9.5.18, 9.4.23, 9.6.14, 10.9, 11.4, and 12-beta2 are affected by a bug (tracked by the PostgreSQL project as bug #15865) which prevents those versions from being used with Grafana. The bug has been fixed in more recent versions of PostgreSQL.

Supported web browsers

Grafana is supported in the current version of the following browsers. Older versions of these browsers might not be supported, so you should always upgrade to the latest version when using Grafana.

Chrome/Chromium
Firefox
Safari
Microsoft Edge
Internet Explorer 11 is only fully supported in Grafana versions prior v6.0.

Note: Always enable JavaScript in your browser. Running Grafana without JavaScript enabled in the browser is not supported.

Install on Debian/Ubuntu

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 12:26:57 +0000

Install on Debian or Ubuntu

This page explains how to install Grafana dependencies, download and install Grafana, get the service up and running on your Debian or Ubuntu system, and also describes the installation package details.

Note on upgrading

While the process for upgrading Grafana is very similar to installing Grafana, there are some key backup steps you should perform. Read Upgrading Grafana for tips and guidance on updating an existing installation.

Note: You can use Grafana Cloud to avoid the overhead of installing, maintaining, and scaling your observability stack. The free forever plan includes Grafana, 10K Prometheus series, 50 GB logs, and more.Create a free account to get started.

1. Download and install

You can install Grafana using our official APT repository, by downloading a .deb package, or by downloading a binary .tar.gz file.

Install from APT repository

If you install from the APT repository, then Grafana is automatically updated every time you run apt-get update.

Grafana Version	Package	Repository
Grafana Enterprise	grafana-enterprise	`https://packages.grafana.com/enterprise/deb stable main`
Grafana Enterprise (Beta)	grafana-enterprise	`https://packages.grafana.com/enterprise/deb beta main`
Grafana OSS	grafana	`https://packages.grafana.com/oss/deb stable main`
Grafana OSS (Beta)	grafana	`https://packages.grafana.com/oss/deb beta main`

Note: Grafana Enterprise is the recommended and default edition. It is available for free and includes all the features of the OSS edition. You can also upgrade to the full Enterprise feature set, which has support for Enterprise plugins.

To install the latest Enterprise edition:

sudo apt-get install -y apt-transport-https
sudo apt-get install -y software-properties-common wget
wget -q -O - https://packages.grafana.com/gpg.key | sudo apt-key add -

Add this repository for stable releases:

echo "deb https://packages.grafana.com/enterprise/deb stable main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/grafana.list

Add this repository if you want beta releases:

echo "deb https://packages.grafana.com/enterprise/deb beta main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/grafana.list

After you add the repository:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install grafana-enterprise

To install the latest OSS release:

sudo apt-get install -y apt-transport-https
sudo apt-get install -y software-properties-common wget
wget -q -O - https://packages.grafana.com/gpg.key | sudo apt-key add -

Add this repository for stable releases:

echo "deb https://packages.grafana.com/oss/deb stable main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/grafana.list

Add this repository if you want beta releases:

echo "deb https://packages.grafana.com/oss/deb beta main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/grafana.list

After you add the repository:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install grafana

Install .deb package

If you install the .deb package, then you will need to manually update Grafana for each new version.

On the Grafana download page, select the Grafana version you want to install.
- The most recent Grafana version is selected by default.
- The Version field displays only finished releases. If you want to install a beta version, click Nightly Builds and then select a version.
Select an Edition.
- Enterprise - Recommended download. Functionally identical to the open source version, but includes features you can unlock with a license if you so choose.
- Open Source - Functionally identical to the Enterprise version, but you will need to download the Enterprise version if you want Enterprise features.
Depending on which system you are running, click Linux or ARM.
Copy and paste the code from the installation page into your command line and run. It follows the pattern shown below.

sudo apt-get install -y adduser
wget <.deb package url>
sudo dpkg -i grafana<edition>_<version>_amd64.deb

Install from binary .tar.gz file

Download the latest .tar.gz file and extract it. The files extract into a folder named after the Grafana version downloaded. This folder contains all files required to run Grafana. There are no init scripts or install scripts in this package.

wget <tar.gz package url>
sudo tar -zxvf <tar.gz package>

2. Start the server

This starts the grafana-server process as the grafana user, which was created during the package installation.

If you installed with the APT repository or .deb package, then you can start the server using systemd or init.d. If you installed a binary .tar.gz file, then you need to execute the binary.

Start the server with systemd

To start the service and verify that the service has started:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl start grafana-server
sudo systemctl status grafana-server

Configure the Grafana server to start at boot:

sudo systemctl enable grafana-server.service

Serving Grafana on a port < 1024

If you are using systemd and want to start Grafana on a port that is less than 1024, then you must add a systemd unit override.

The following command creates an override file in your configured editor:

# Alternatively, create a file in /etc/systemd/system/grafana-server.service.d/override.conf
systemctl edit grafana-server.service

1 Add these additional settings to grant the CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE capability. To read more about capabilities, see the manual page on capabilities.

[Service]
# Give the CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE capability
CapabilityBoundingSet=CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE
AmbientCapabilities=CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE

# A private user cannot have process capabilities on the host's user
# namespace and thus CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE has no effect.
PrivateUsers=false

Start the server with init.d

To start the service and verify that the service has started:

sudo service grafana-server start
sudo service grafana-server status

Configure the Grafana server to start at boot:

sudo update-rc.d grafana-server defaults

Execute the binary

The grafana-server binary .tar.gz needs the working directory to be the root install directory where the binary and the public folder are located.

Start Grafana by running:

./bin/grafana-server web

Package details

Installs binary to /usr/sbin/grafana-server
Installs Init.d script to /etc/init.d/grafana-server
Creates default file (environment vars) to /etc/default/grafana-server
Installs configuration file to /etc/grafana/grafana.ini
Installs systemd service (if systemd is available) name grafana-server.service
The default configuration sets the log file at /var/log/grafana/grafana.log
The default configuration specifies a SQLite3 db at /var/lib/grafana/grafana.db
Installs HTML/JS/CSS and other Grafana files at /usr/share/grafana

Next steps

Refer to the Getting Started guide for information about logging in, setting up data sources, and so on.

Configure Grafana

Refer to the Configuration page for details on options for customizing your environment, logging, database, and so on.

Install on RPM-based Linux

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 12:26:57 +0000

Install on RPM-based Linux (CentOS, Fedora, OpenSuse, Red Hat)

This topic explains how to install Grafana dependencies, download and install Grafana, get the service up and running on your RPM-based Linux system, and the installation package details.

Note on upgrading

Note: You can use Grafana Cloud to avoid the overhead of installing, maintaining, and scaling your observability stack. The free forever plan includes Grafana, 10K Prometheus series, 50 GB logs, and more.Create a free account to get started.

1. Download and install

You can install Grafana from a YUM repository, manually using YUM, manually using RPM, or by downloading a binary .tar.gz file.

Install from YUM repository

If you install from the YUM repository, then Grafana is automatically updated every time you run sudo yum update.

Grafana Version	Package	Repository
Grafana Enterprise	grafana-enterprise	`https://packages.grafana.com/enterprise/rpm`
Grafana Enterprise (Beta)	grafana-enterprise	`https://packages.grafana.com/enterprise/rpm-beta`
Grafana OSS	grafana	`https://packages.grafana.com/oss/rpm`
Grafana OSS (Beta)	grafana	`https://packages.grafana.com/oss/rpm-beta`

Note: Grafana Enterprise is the recommended and default edition. It is available for free and includes all the features of the OSS Edition. You can also upgrade to the full Enterprise feature set and has support for Enterprise plugins.

Add a new file to your YUM repo using the method of your choice. The command below uses nano.

sudo nano /etc/yum.repos.d/grafana.repo

Choose if you want to install the Open Source or Enterprise edition of Grafana and enter the information from the edition you’ve chosen into grafana.repo. If you want to install the beta version of Grafana you need to replace the URL with a beta URL from the table above.

We recommend all users to install the Enterprise Edition of Grafana, which can be seamlessly upgraded with a Grafana Enterprise subscription.

For Enterprise releases:

[grafana]
name=grafana
baseurl=https://packages.grafana.com/enterprise/rpm
repo_gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://packages.grafana.com/gpg.key
sslverify=1
sslcacert=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt

For OSS releases:

[grafana]
name=grafana
baseurl=https://packages.grafana.com/oss/rpm
repo_gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://packages.grafana.com/gpg.key
sslverify=1
sslcacert=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt

Install Grafana with one of the following commands:

sudo yum install grafana

# or

sudo yum install grafana-enterprise

Install manually with YUM

If you install manually with YUM, then you will need to manually update Grafana for each new version. To enable automatic updates for your Grafana installation please use the instructions below to install via our YUM repository.

On the Grafana download page, select the Grafana version you want to install.
- The most recent Grafana version is selected by default.
- The Version field displays only finished releases. If you want to install a beta version, click Nightly Builds and then select a version.
Select an Edition.
- Enterprise - Recommended download. Functionally identical to the open source version, but includes features you can unlock with a license if you so choose.
- Open Source - Functionally identical to the Enterprise version, but you will need to download the Enterprise version if you want enterprise features.
Depending on which system you are running, click Linux or ARM.
Copy and paste the code from the installation page into your command line and run. It follows the pattern shown below.

wget <rpm package url>
sudo yum localinstall <local rpm package>

You can also install Grafana using YUM directly:

sudo yum install <rpm package url>

Install with RPM

If you install with RPM, then you will need to manually update Grafana for each new version. This method varies according to which Linux OS you are running. Read the instructions fully before you begin.

Note: The .rpm files are signed, you can verify the signature with this public GPG key.

On the Grafana download page, select the Grafana version you want to install.
- The most recent Grafana version is selected by default.
- The Version field displays only finished releases. If you want to install a beta version, click Nightly Builds and then select a version.
Select an Edition.
- Enterprise - Recommended download. Functionally identical to the open source version, but includes features you can unlock with a license if you so choose.
- Open Source - Functionally identical to the Enterprise version, but you will need to download the Enterprise version if you want Enterprise features.
Depending on which system you are running, click Linux or ARM.
Copy and paste the .rpm package URL and the local .rpm package information from the installation page into the pattern shown below, then run the commands.

On CentOS, Fedora, Red Hat, or RHEL:

sudo yum install initscripts urw-fonts wget
wget <rpm package url>
sudo rpm -Uvh <local rpm package>

On OpenSUSE or SUSE:

wget <rpm package url>
sudo rpm -i --nodeps <local rpm package>

Install from binary .tar.gz file

Download the latest .tar.gz file and extract it. The files are extracted into a folder named after the Grafana version that you downloaded. This folder contains all files required to run Grafana. There are no init scripts or install scripts in this package.

wget <tar.gz package url>
sudo tar -zxvf <tar.gz package>

2. Start the server

This starts the grafana-server process as the grafana user, which was created during the package installation. The systemd commands work in most cases, but some older Linux systems might require init.d. The installer should prompt you with the correct commands.

If you installed with an .rpm package, then you can start the server using systemd or init.d. If you installed a binary .tar.gz file, then you need to execute the binary.

Start the server with systemd

To start the service and verify that the service has started:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl start grafana-server
sudo systemctl status grafana-server

Configure the Grafana server to start at boot:

sudo systemctl enable grafana-server

SUSE or OpenSUSE users: You might need to start the server with the systemd method, then use the init.d method to configure Grafana to start at boot.

Serving Grafana on a port < 1024

If you are using systemd and want to start Grafana on a port that is less than 1024, then you must add a systemd unit override.

The following command creates an override file in your configured editor:

# Alternatively, create a file in /etc/systemd/system/grafana-server.service.d/override.conf
systemctl edit grafana-server.service

1 Add these additional settings to grant the CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE capability. To read more about capabilities, see the manual page on capabilities.

[Service]
# Give the CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE capability
CapabilityBoundingSet=CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE
AmbientCapabilities=CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE

# A private user cannot have process capabilities on the host's user
# namespace and thus CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE has no effect.
PrivateUsers=false

Serving Grafana behind a proxy

When serving Grafana behind a proxy, you need to configure the http_proxy and https_proxy environment variables.

Centos 6

If you are on Centos 6, add the following lines to the /etc/sysconfig/grafana-server file.

export no_proxy=internal.domain,127.0.0.1
export http_proxy=http://proxy.domain:3128/
export https_proxy=http://proxy.domain:3128/

Centos 7

If you are on Centos 7, add the following lines to the /etc/sysconfig/grafana-server file.

http_proxy=http://proxy.domain:3128/
https_proxy=http://proxy.domain:3128/
no_proxy=internal.domain,127.0.0.1

Start the server with init.d

To start the service and verify that the service has started:

sudo service grafana-server start
sudo service grafana-server status

Configure the Grafana server to start at boot:

sudo /sbin/chkconfig --add grafana-server

Execute the binary

The grafana-server binary needs the working directory to be the root install directory where the binary and the public folder are located.

Start Grafana by running:

./bin/grafana-server web

Package details

Installs binary to /usr/sbin/grafana-server
Copies init.d script to /etc/init.d/grafana-server
Installs default file (environment vars) to /etc/sysconfig/grafana-server
Copies configuration file to /etc/grafana/grafana.ini
Installs systemd service (if systemd is available) name grafana-server.service
The default configuration uses a log file at /var/log/grafana/grafana.log
The default configuration specifies an sqlite3 database at /var/lib/grafana/grafana.db

Next steps

Refer to the Getting Started guide for information about logging in, setting up data sources, and so on.

Configure Grafana

Refer to the Configuration page for details on options for customizing your environment, logging, database, and so on.

Install on Windows

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 12:26:57 +0000

Install on Windows

You can either download the Windows installer package or a standalone Windows binary file.

Read Upgrading Grafana for tips and guidance on updating an existing installation.

Navigate to Download Grafana.
Select a Grafana version you want to install.
- The most recent Grafana version is selected by default.
- The Version field displays only finished releases. If you want to install a beta version, click Nightly Builds and then select a version.
Select an Edition.
- Enterprise - Recommended download. Functionally identical to the open source version, but includes features you can unlock with a license if you so choose.
- Open Source - Functionally identical to the enterprise version, but you will need to download the enterprise version if you want enterprise features.
Click Windows.

You can either use the Windows installer or you can install a standalone Windows binary.

Install with Windows installer (recommended)

Click Download the installer.
Open and run the installer.

To run Grafana, open your browser and go to the Grafana port (http://localhost:3000/ is default) and then follow the instructions in Getting Started.

Install standalone Windows binary

Click Download the zip file. Important: After you’ve downloaded the zip file and before extracting it, make sure to open the properties for that file (right-click Properties) and select the unblock check box and then click Ok.
Extract this folder to anywhere you want Grafana to run from.
Start Grafana by executing grafana-server.exe, located in the bin directory, preferably from the command line. If you want to run Grafana as a Windows service, then download NSSM. It is very easy to add Grafana as a Windows service using that tool.

To run Grafana, open your browser and go to the Grafana port (http://localhost:3000/ is default) and then follow the instructions in Getting Started.

Note: The default Grafana port is 3000. This port might require extra permissions on Windows. If it does not appear in the default port, you can try changing to a different port.

Go into the conf directory and copy sample.ini to custom.ini. Note: You should edit custom.ini, never defaults.ini.

Edit custom.ini and uncomment the http_port configuration option (; is the comment character in ini files) and change it to something like 8080 or similar. That port should not require extra Windows privileges. Read more about the configuration options.

Install on macOS

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 12:26:57 +0000

Install on macOS

This page explains how to install Grafana and get the service running on your macOS.

Note on upgrading: While the process for upgrading Grafana is very similar to installing Grafana, there are some key backup steps you should perform. Before you perform an upgrade, read Upgrading Grafana for tips and guidance on updating an existing installation.

Install with Homebrew

Use Homebrew to install the most recent released version of Grafana using Homebrew package.

On the Homebrew homepage, search for Grafana. The last stable and released version is listed.
Open a terminal and enter:
```
brew update
brew install grafana
```
The brew page downloads and untars the files into:
- /usr/local/Cellar/grafana/[version] (Homebrew v2)
- /opt/homebrew/Cellar/grafana/[version] (Homebrew v3)
Start Grafana using the command:
Bash
```
brew services start grafana
```

Install standalone macOS binaries

To install a nightly build, or to install the latest version of Grafana without Homebrew, go to the Grafana download page.

Select the Grafana version you want to install. By default, the most recent released version is selected.

Note: The downloads page lists only finished releases. If you want to install a beta version, click [Nightly ] Nightly Builds and then select a version.
Select an Edition.
- Open Source - Functionally identical to the enterprise version, but you will need to download the enterprise version if you want enterprise features.
- Enterprise - Recommended download. Functionally identical to the open source version, but includes features you can unlock with a license if you so choose.
Click Mac.
Open a terminal and download the binary using the cURL command. The following example shows Grafana 7.1.5 version:
Bash
```
curl -O https://dl.grafana.com/oss/release/grafana-7.1.5.darwin-amd64.tar.gz
```
Untar the gz file and copy the files to the location of your preference.
To start Grafana service, go to the directory and run the command:
Bash
```
./bin/grafana-server web
```

Next steps

Refer to the Getting Started guide for information about logging in, setting up data sources, and so on. Also, refer to the Configuration page for details on options for customizing your environment, logging, database, and so on.

Upgrade

Using Homebrew

To upgrade Grafana, use the reinstall command:

brew update
brew reinstall grafana

Run Grafana Docker image

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 12:26:57 +0000

Run Grafana Docker image

You can install and run Grafana using the official Docker images. Our docker images come in two editions:

Grafana Enterprise: grafana/grafana-enterprise

Grafana Open Source: grafana/grafana-oss

Each edition is available in two variants: Alpine and Ubuntu. See below.

For documentation regarding the configuration of a docker image, refer to configure a Grafana Docker image.

This topic also contains important information about migrating from earlier Docker image versions.

Note: You can use Grafana Cloud to avoid the overhead of installing, maintaining, and scaling your observability stack. The free forever plan includes Grafana, 10K Prometheus series, 50 GB logs, and more.Create a free account to get started.

Alpine image (recommended)

Grafana Enterprise edition: grafana/grafana-enterprise:<version>

Grafana Open Source edition: grafana/grafana-oss:<version>

The default images are based on the popular Alpine Linux project, available in the Alpine official image. Alpine Linux is much smaller than most distribution base images, and thus leads to slimmer and more secure images.

The Alpine variant is highly recommended when security and final image size being as small as possible is desired. The main caveat to note is that it uses musl libc instead of glibc and friends, so certain software might run into issues depending on the depth of their libc requirements. However, most software don’t have an issue with this, so this variant is usually a very safe choice.

Note: Grafana docker images were based on Ubuntu prior to version 6.4.0.

Ubuntu image

Grafana Enterprise edition: grafana/grafana-enterprise:<version>-ubuntu

Grafana Open Source edition: grafana/grafana-oss:<version>-ubuntu

These images are based on Ubuntu, available in the Ubuntu official image. It is an alternative image for those who prefer an Ubuntu based image and/or are dependent on certain tooling not available for Alpine.

Run Grafana

You can run the latest Grafana version, run a specific version, or run an unstable version based on the main branch of the grafana/grafana GitHub repository.

Run the latest stable version of Grafana

Note: If you are on a Linux system, you might need to add sudo before the command or add your user to the docker group.

docker run -d -p 3000:3000 grafana/grafana-enterprise

Run a specific version of Grafana

Note: If you are on a Linux system, you might need to add sudo before the command or add your user to the docker group.

docker run -d -p 3000:3000 --name grafana grafana/grafana-enterprise:<version number>

Example:

docker run -d -p 3000:3000 --name grafana grafana/grafana-enterprise:8.2.0

Run the Grafana main branch

For every successful build of the main branch, we update the grafana/grafana-oss:main and grafana/grafana-oss:main-ubuntu tags. Additionally, two new tags are created, grafana/grafana-oss-dev:<version>-<build ID>pre and grafana/grafana-oss-dev:<version>-<build ID>pre-ubuntu, where version is the next version of Grafana and build ID is the ID of the corresponding CI build. Use these to get access to the latest main builds of Grafana.

When running Grafana main in production, we strongly recommend that you use the grafana/grafana-oss-dev:<version>-<build ID>pre tag. This tag guarantees that you use a specific version of Grafana instead of whatever was the most recent commit at the time.

For a list of available tags, check out grafana/grafana-oss and grafana/grafana-oss-dev.

Install plugins in the Docker container

You can install official and community plugins listed on the Grafana plugins page or from a custom URL.

Install official and community Grafana plugins

Pass the plugins you want installed to Docker with the GF_INSTALL_PLUGINS environment variable as a comma-separated list. This sends each plugin name to grafana-cli plugins install ${plugin} and installs them when Grafana starts.

docker run -d \
  -p 3000:3000 \
  --name=grafana \
  -e "GF_INSTALL_PLUGINS=grafana-clock-panel,grafana-simple-json-datasource" \
  grafana/grafana-enterprise

Note: If you need to specify the version of a plugin, then you can add it to the GF_INSTALL_PLUGINS environment variable. Otherwise, the latest is used. For example: -e "GF_INSTALL_PLUGINS=grafana-clock-panel 1.0.1,grafana-simple-json-datasource 1.3.5".

Install plugins from other sources

Only available in Grafana v5.3.1 and later.

You can install a plugin from a custom URL by specifying the URL like this: GF_INSTALL_PLUGINS=<url to plugin zip>;<plugin install folder name>.

docker run -d \
  -p 3000:3000 \
  --name=grafana \
  -e "GF_INSTALL_PLUGINS=http://plugin-domain.com/my-custom-plugin.zip;custom-plugin,grafana-clock-panel" \
  grafana/grafana-enterprise

Build and run a Docker image with pre-installed plugins

You can build your own customized image that includes plugins. This saves time if you are creating multiple images and you want them all to have the same plugins installed on build.

In the Grafana GitHub repository there is a folder called packaging/docker/custom/, which includes two Dockerfiles, Dockerfile and ubuntu.Dockerfile, that can be used to build a custom Grafana image. It accepts GRAFANA_VERSION, GF_INSTALL_PLUGINS, and GF_INSTALL_IMAGE_RENDERER_PLUGIN as build arguments.

Build with pre-installed plugins

If you need to specify the version of a plugin, you can add it to the GF_INSTALL_PLUGINS build argument. Otherwise, the latest will be assumed. For example: --build-arg "GF_INSTALL_PLUGINS=grafana-clock-panel 1.0.1,grafana-simple-json-datasource 1.3.5"

Example of how to build and run:

cd packaging/docker/custom
docker build \
  --build-arg "GRAFANA_VERSION=latest" \
  --build-arg "GF_INSTALL_PLUGINS=grafana-clock-panel,grafana-simple-json-datasource" \
  -t grafana-custom -f Dockerfile .

docker run -d -p 3000:3000 --name=grafana grafana-custom

Build with pre-installed plugins from other sources

You can build a Docker image with plugins from other sources by specifying the URL like this: GF_INSTALL_PLUGINS=<url to plugin zip>;<plugin install folder name>.

cd packaging/docker/custom
docker build \
  --build-arg "GRAFANA_VERSION=latest" \
  --build-arg "GF_INSTALL_PLUGINS=http://plugin-domain.com/my-custom-plugin.zip;custom-plugin,grafana-clock-panel" \
  -t grafana-custom -f Dockerfile .

docker run -d -p 3000:3000 --name=grafana grafana-custom

Replace Dockerfile in above example with ubuntu.Dockerfile to build a custom Ubuntu based image (Grafana v6.5+).

Build with Grafana Image Renderer plugin pre-installed

Only available in Grafana v6.5 and later. This is experimental.

The Grafana Image Renderer plugin does not currently work if it is installed in a Grafana Docker image. You can build a custom Docker image by using the GF_INSTALL_IMAGE_RENDERER_PLUGIN build argument. This installs additional dependencies needed for the Grafana Image Renderer plugin to run.

Example of how to build and run:

cd packaging/docker/custom
docker build \
  --build-arg "GRAFANA_VERSION=latest" \
  --build-arg "GF_INSTALL_IMAGE_RENDERER_PLUGIN=true" \
  -t grafana-custom -f Dockerfile .

docker run -d -p 3000:3000 --name=grafana grafana-custom

Replace Dockerfile in above example with ubuntu.Dockerfile to build a custom Ubuntu-based image (Grafana v6.5+).

Migrate from previous Docker containers versions

This section contains important information if you want to migrate from previous Grafana container versions to a more current one.

Migrate to v7.3 or later

The Grafana Docker image runs with the root group (id 0) instead of the grafana group (id 472), for better compatibility with OpenShift. If you extend the official Docker image you may need to change your scripts to use the root group instead of grafana.

Migrate to v6.5 or later

Grafana Docker image now comes in two variants, one Alpine based and one Ubuntu based, see Image Variants for details.

Migrate to v6.4 or later

Grafana Docker image was changed to be based on Alpine instead of Ubuntu.

Migrate to v5.1 or later

The Docker container for Grafana has seen a major rewrite for 5.1.

Important changes

File ownership is no longer modified during startup with chown.
Default user ID is now 472 instead of 104.
Removed the following implicit volumes:
- /var/lib/grafana
- /etc/grafana
- /var/log/grafana

Removal of implicit volumes

Previously /var/lib/grafana, /etc/grafana and /var/log/grafana were defined as volumes in the Dockerfile. This led to the creation of three volumes each time a new instance of the Grafana container started, whether you wanted it or not.

You should always be careful to define your own named volume for storage, but if you depended on these volumes, then you should be aware that an upgraded container will no longer have them.

Warning: When migrating from an earlier version to 5.1 or later using Docker compose and implicit volumes, you need to use docker inspect to find out which volumes your container is mapped to so that you can map them to the upgraded container as well. You will also have to change file ownership (or user) as documented below.

User ID changes

In Grafana v5.1, we changed the ID and group of the Grafana user and in v7.3 we changed the group. Unfortunately this means that files created prior to v5.1 won’t have the correct permissions for later versions. We made this change so that it would be more likely that the Grafana users ID would be unique to Grafana. For example, on Ubuntu 16.04 104 is already in use by the syslog user.

Version	User	User ID	Group	Group ID
< 5.1	grafana	104	grafana	107
>= 5.1	grafana	472	grafana	472
>= 7.3	grafana	472	root	0

There are two possible solutions to this problem. Either you start the new container as the root user and change ownership from 104 to 472, or you start the upgraded container as user 104.

Run Docker as a different user

docker run --user 104 --volume "<your volume mapping here>" grafana/grafana-enterprise:8.2.0

Specify a user in docker-compose.yml

version: '2'

services:
  grafana:
    image: grafana/grafana-enterprise:8.2.0
    ports:
      - 3000:3000
    user: '104'

Modify permissions

The commands below run bash inside the Grafana container with your volume mapped in. This makes it possible to modify the file ownership to match the new container. Always be careful when modifying permissions.

$ docker run -ti --user root --volume "<your volume mapping here>" --entrypoint bash grafana/grafana-enterprise:8.2.0

# in the container you just started:
chown -R root:root /etc/grafana && \
chmod -R a+r /etc/grafana && \
chown -R grafana:grafana /var/lib/grafana && \
chown -R grafana:grafana /usr/share/grafana

Next steps

Refer to the Getting Started guide for information about logging in, setting up data sources, and so on.

Configure Docker image

Refer to Configure a Grafana Docker image page for details on options for customizing your environment, logging, database, and so on.

Configure Grafana

Refer to the Configuration page for details on options for customizing your environment, logging, database, and so on.

Deploy Grafana on Kubernetes

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 12:26:57 +0000

Deploy Grafana on Kubernetes

This page explains how to install and run Grafana on Kubernetes (K8S). It uses Kubernetes manifests for the setup. If you prefer Helm, refer to the Grafana Helm community charts.

If you are interested in Grafana Enterprise (not Grafana OS), jump to Deploy Grafana Enterprise on Kubernetes section.

Create Grafana Kubernetes manifest

Create a file called grafana.yaml, then paste the contents below.

---
apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
  name: grafana-pvc
spec:
  accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 1Gi
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  labels:
    app: grafana
  name: grafana
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: grafana
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: grafana
    spec:
      securityContext:
        fsGroup: 472
        supplementalGroups:
          - 0
      containers:
        - name: grafana
          image: grafana/grafana:8.4.4
          imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
          ports:
            - containerPort: 3000
              name: http-grafana
              protocol: TCP
          readinessProbe:
            failureThreshold: 3
            httpGet:
              path: /robots.txt
              port: 3000
              scheme: HTTP
            initialDelaySeconds: 10
            periodSeconds: 30
            successThreshold: 1
            timeoutSeconds: 2
          livenessProbe:
            failureThreshold: 3
            initialDelaySeconds: 30
            periodSeconds: 10
            successThreshold: 1
            tcpSocket:
              port: 3000
            timeoutSeconds: 1
          resources:
            requests:
              cpu: 250m
              memory: 750Mi
          volumeMounts:
            - mountPath: /var/lib/grafana
              name: grafana-pv
      volumes:
        - name: grafana-pv
          persistentVolumeClaim:
            claimName: grafana-pvc
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: grafana
spec:
  ports:
    - port: 3000
      protocol: TCP
      targetPort: http-grafana
  selector:
    app: grafana
  sessionAffinity: None
  type: LoadBalancer

Send manifest to Kubernetes API server

Run the following command: kubectl apply -f grafana.yaml
Check that it worked by running the following: kubectl port-forward service/grafana 3000:3000
Navigate to localhost:3000 in your browser. You should see a Grafana login page.
Use admin for both the username and password to login.

Deploy Grafana Enterprise on Kubernetes

The process for deploying Grafana Enterprise is almost identical to the process above, except for some extra steps required to add in your license file. They are described in the following sections.

Obtain Grafana Enterprise license

To run Grafana Enterprise, you need a valid license. Contact a Grafana Labs representative to obtain the license. This topic assumes that you already have done this and have a license.jwt file. Your license should also be associated with a URL, which we will use later in the topic.

Create License Secret

Create a Kubernetes secret from your license file using the following command:

kubectl create secret generic ge-license --from-file=/path/to/your/license.jwt

Create Grafana Enterprise configuration

Create a Grafana configuration file with the name grafana.ini. Then paste the content below.

Note: You will have to update the root_url field to the url associated with the license you were given.

[enterprise]
license_path = /etc/grafana/license/license.jwt
[server]
root_url =/your/license/root/url

Create Configmap for Grafana Enterprise Config

Create a Kubernetes Configmap from your grafana.ini file with the following command:

kubectl create configmap ge-config --from-file=/path/to/your/config.ini

Create Grafana Enterprise Kubernetes manifest

Create a grafana.yaml file, then paste the content below. This YAML is identical to the one for Grafana OS install except for the additional references to the Configmap which has your Grafana configuration file and the Secret that has your license.

---
apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
  name: grafana
spec:
  accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 1Gi
  storageClassName: local-path
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  labels:
    app: grafana
  name: grafana
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: grafana
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: grafana
    spec:
      containers:
        - image: grafana/grafana-enterprise:latest
          imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
          name: grafana
          ports:
            - containerPort: 3000
              name: http-grafana
              protocol: TCP
          readinessProbe:
            failureThreshold: 3
            httpGet:
              path: /robots.txt
              port: 3000
              scheme: HTTP
            initialDelaySeconds: 10
            periodSeconds: 30
            successThreshold: 1
            timeoutSeconds: 2
          resources:
            limits:
              memory: 4Gi
            requests:
              cpu: 100m
              memory: 2Gi
          volumeMounts:
            - mountPath: /var/lib/grafana
              name: grafana
            - mountPath: /etc/grafana
              name: ge-config
            - mountPath: /etc/grafana/license
              name: ge-license
      volumes:
        - name: grafana
          persistentVolumeClaim:
            claimName: grafana
        - name: ge-config
          configMap:
            name: ge-config
        - name: ge-license
          secret:
            secretName: ge-license
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: grafana
spec:
  ports:
    - port: 3000
      protocol: TCP
      targetPort: http-grafana
  selector:
    app: grafana
  sessionAffinity: None
  type: LoadBalancer

Send manifest to Kubernetes API Server kubectl apply -f grafana.yaml
Check that it worked by running the following: kubectl port-forward service/grafana 3000:3000
Navigate to localhost:3000 in your browser. You should see the Grafana login page.
Use admin for both the username and password to login. If it worked, you should see Enterprise (Licensed) at the bottom of the page.

Upgrade Grafana

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 12:26:57 +0000

Upgrade Grafana

We recommend that you upgrade Grafana often to stay up to date with the latest fixes and enhancements. In order to make this a reality, Grafana upgrades are backward compatible and the upgrade process is simple and quick.

Upgrading is generally safe (between many minor and one major version) and dashboards and graphs will look the same. There may be minor breaking changes in some edge cases, which are outlined in the Release Notes and Changelog

Backup

We recommend that you backup a few things in case you have to rollback the upgrade.

Installed plugins - Back them up before you upgrade them in case you want to rollback the Grafana version and want to get the exact same versions you were running before the upgrade.
Configuration files do not need to be backed up. However, you might want to in case you add new configuration options after upgrade and then rollback.

Database backup

Before upgrading it can be a good idea to backup your Grafana database. This will ensure that you can always rollback to your previous version. During startup, Grafana will automatically migrate the database schema (if there are changes or new tables). Sometimes this can cause issues if you later want to downgrade.

sqlite

If you use sqlite you only need to make a backup of your grafana.db file. This is usually located at /var/lib/grafana/grafana.db on Unix systems. If you are unsure what database you use and where it is stored check you grafana configuration file. If you installed grafana to custom location using a binary tar/zip it is usually in <grafana_install_dir>/data.

mysql

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

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

postgres

backup:
> pg_dump grafana > grafana_backup

restore:
> psql grafana < grafana_backup

Ubuntu or Debian

You can upgrade Grafana by following the same procedure as when you installed it.

Upgrade Debian package

If you installed Grafana by downloading a Debian package (.deb), then you can execute the same dpkg -i command but with the new package. It will upgrade your Grafana installation.

Go to the download page for the latest download links.

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

Upgrade from APT repository

If you installed Grafana from our APT repository, then Grafana will automatically update when you run apt-get upgrade to upgrade all system packages.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Upgrade from binary .tar file

If you downloaded the binary .tar.gz package, then you can just download and extract the new package and overwrite all your existing files. However, this might overwrite your config changes.

We recommend that you save your custom configuration changes in a file named <grafana_install_dir>/conf/custom.ini. This allows you to upgrade Grafana without risking losing your configuration changes.

Centos / RHEL

If you installed Grafana by downloading an RPM package you can just follow the same installation guide and execute the same yum install or rpm -i command but with the new package. It will upgrade your Grafana installation.

If you used our YUM repository:

sudo yum update grafana

Docker

This just an example, details 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

If you downloaded the Windows binary package you can just download a newer package and extract to the same location (and overwrite the existing files). This might overwrite your configuration changes. We recommend that you save your configuration changes in a file named <grafana_install_dir>/conf/custom.ini as this will make upgrades easier without risking losing your configuration changes.

Update plugins

After you have upgraded, we strongly recommend that you update all your plugins as a new version of Grafana can make older plugins stop working properly.

You can update all plugins using

grafana-cli plugins update-all

Upgrading to v5.0

The dashboard grid layout engine has changed. All dashboards will be automatically upgraded to new positioning system when you load them in v5. Dashboards saved in v5 will not work in older versions of Grafana. Some external panel plugins might need to be updated to work properly.

For more details on the new panel positioning system, refer to panel size position

Upgrading to v5.2

One of the database migrations included in this release will update all annotation timestamps from second to millisecond precision. If you have a large amount of annotations the database migration may take a long time to complete which may cause problems if you use systemd to run Grafana.

We’ve got one report where using systemd, PostgreSQL and a large amount of annotations (table size 1645mb) took 8-20 minutes for the database migration to complete. However, the grafana-server process was killed after 90 seconds by systemd. Any database migration queries in progress when systemd kills the grafana-server process continues to execute in database until finished.

If you’re using systemd and have a large amount of annotations consider temporary adjusting the systemd TimeoutStartSec setting to something high like 30m before upgrading.

Upgrading to v6.0

If you have text panels with script tags they will no longer work due to a new setting that per default disallow unsanitized HTML. For more information about the new setting, refer to disable sanitize html.

Authentication and security

If you are using Grafana’s builtin, LDAP (without Auth Proxy) or OAuth authentication all users will be required to login upon the next visit after the upgrade.

If you have cookie_secure set to true in the session section you probably want to change the cookie_secure to true in the security section as well. Ending up with a configuration like this:

[session]
cookie_secure = true

[security]
cookie_secure = true

The login_remember_days, cookie_username and cookie_remember_name settings in the security section are no longer being used so they’re safe to remove.

If you have login_remember_days configured to 0 (zero) you should change your configuration to this to accomplish similar behavior, i.e. a logged in user will maximum be logged in for 1 day until being forced to login again:

[auth]
login_maximum_inactive_lifetime_days = 1
login_maximum_lifetime_days = 1

The default cookie name for storing the auth token is grafana_session. you can configure this with login_cookie_name in [auth] settings.

Upgrading to v6.2

Ensure encryption of data source secrets

Data sources store passwords and basic auth passwords in secureJsonData encrypted (AES-256 in CFB mode) by default. Existing data source will keep working with unencrypted passwords. If you want to migrate to encrypted storage for your existing data sources you can do that by:

For data sources created through UI, you need to go to data source config, re-enter the password or basic auth password and save the data source.
For data sources created by provisioning, you need to update your config file and use secureJsonData.password or secureJsonData.basicAuthPassword field. See provisioning docs for example of current configuration.

Embedding Grafana

If you’re embedding Grafana in a <frame>, <iframe>, <embed> or <object> on a different website it will no longer work due to a new setting that per default instructs the browser to not allow Grafana to be embedded. For more information about embedding Grafana, refer to configuration embedding about this new setting.

Session storage is no longer used

In 6.2 we completely removed the backend session storage since we replaced the previous login session implementation with an auth token. If you are using Auth proxy with LDAP, a shared cached is used in Grafana, so you might want to configure [remote_cache] instead. If not, Grafana will fall back to using the database as a shared cache.

Upgrading Elasticsearch to v7.0+

The semantics of max concurrent shard requests changed in Elasticsearch v7.0, see release notes for reference.

If you upgrade Elasticsearch to v7.0+ you should make sure to update the data source configuration in Grafana so that version is 7.0+ and max concurrent shard requests properly configured. 256 was the default in pre v7.0 versions. In v7.0 and above 5 is the default.

Upgrading to v6.4

Annotations database migration

One of the database migrations included in this release will merge multiple rows used to represent an annotation range into a single row. If you have a large number of region annotations the database migration may take a long time to complete. See Upgrading to v5.2 for tips on how to manage this process.

Docker

Grafana’s docker image is now based on Alpine instead of Ubuntu.

Plugins that need updating

Splunk

Upgrading to v6.5

Pre Grafana 6.5.0, the CloudWatch datasource used the GetMetricStatistics API for all queries that did not have an ´id´ and did not have an ´expression´ defined in the query editor. The GetMetricStatistics API has a limit of 400 transactions per second (TPS). In this release, all queries use the GetMetricData API which has a limit of 50 TPS and 100 metrics per transaction. We expect this transition to be smooth for most of our users, but in case you do face throttling issues we suggest you increase the TPS quota. To do that, please visit the AWS Service Quotas console. For more details around CloudWatch API limits, see CloudWatch docs.

Each request to the GetMetricData API can include 100 queries. This means that each panel in Grafana will only issue one GetMetricData request, regardless of the number of query rows that are present in the panel. Consequently as it is no longer possible to set HighRes on a per query level anymore, this switch is now removed from the query editor. High resolution can still be achieved by choosing a smaller minimum period in the query editor.

The handling of multi-valued template variables in dimension values has been changed in Grafana 6.5. When a multi template variable is being used, Grafana will generate a search expression. In the GetMetricData API, expressions are limited to 1024 characters, so it might be the case that this limit is reached when a multi-valued template variable that has a lot of values is being used. If this is the case, we suggest you start using * wildcard as dimension value instead of a multi-valued template variable.

Upgrading to v6.6

The Generic OAuth setting send_client_credentials_via_post, used for supporting non-compliant providers, has been removed. From now on, Grafana will automatically detect if credentials should be sent as part of the URL or request body for a specific provider. The result will be remembered and used for additional OAuth requests for that provider.

Chrome 80 treats cookies as SameSite=Lax by default if no SameSite attribute is specified, see https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/5088147346030592.

Due to this change in Chrome, the [security] setting cookie_samesite configured to none now renders cookies with SameSite=None attribute compared to before where no SameSite attribute was added to cookies. To get the old behavior, use value disabled instead of none, see cookie_samesite in Configuration for more information.

Note: There is currently a bug affecting Mac OSX and iOS that causes SameSite=None cookies to be treated as SameSite=Strict and therefore not sent with cross-site requests, see https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=198181 for details. Until this is fixed, SameSite=None might not work properly on Safari.

This version of Chrome also rejects insecure SameSite=None cookies. See https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/5633521622188032 for more information. Make sure that you change the [security] setting cookie_secure to true and use HTTPS when cookie_samesite is configured to none, otherwise authentication in Grafana won’t work properly.

Upgrading to v7.0

PhantomJS removed

PhantomJS was deprecated in Grafana v6.4 and starting from Grafana v7.0.0, all PhantomJS support has been removed. This means that Grafana no longer ships with a built-in image renderer, and we advise you to install the Grafana Image Renderer plugin.

Dashboard minimum refresh interval enforced

A global minimum dashboard refresh interval is now enforced and defaults to 5 seconds. For more information about this setting, refer to minimum refresh interval.

Backend plugins

Grafana now requires backend plugins to be signed. If a backend plugin is not signed Grafana will not load/start it. This is an additional security measure to make sure backend plugin binaries and files haven’t been tampered with. All Grafana Labs authored backend plugins, including Enterprise plugins, are now signed. It’s possible to allow unsigned plugins using a configuration setting, but is something we strongly advise against doing. For more information about this setting, refer to allow loading unsigned plugins.

Starting from Grafana v7.0.0, the cookie path does not include the trailing slash if Grafana is served from a subpath in order to align with RFC 6265. However, stale session cookies (set before the upgrade) can result in unsuccessful logins because they can not be deleted during the standard login phase due to the changed cookie path. Therefore users experiencing login problems are advised to manually delete old session cookies, or administrators can fix this for all users by changing the login_cookie_name, so the old cookie would get ignored.

Upgrading to v7.2

Ensure encryption of existing alert notification channel secrets

Before Grafana v7.2 alert notification channels did not store sensitive settings/secrets such as API tokens and password encrypted in the database. In Grafana v7.2, creating a new alert notification channel will store sensitive settings encrypted in the database.

The following alert notifiers have been updated to support storing their sensitive settings encrypted:

Slack (URL and Token)
Pagerduty (Integration Key)
Webhook (Password)
Prometheus Alertmanager (Basic Auth Password)
Opsgenie (API Key)
Sensu (Password)
Telegram (BOT API Token)
LINE (token)
Pushover (API Token, User key)
Threema Gateway (API Secret)

For existing alert notification channels, there is no automatic migration of storing sensitive settings encrypted, and they will continue to work as before. Migration must be done manually. Opening a configured alert notification channel in the UI and saving it will store sensitive settings encrypted and at the same time reset the historic unencrypted setting of that alert notification channel in the database.

Please note that when migrating a notification channel and later downgrading Grafana to an earlier version, the notification channel will not be able to read stored sensitive settings and, as a result, not function as expected.

For provisioning of alert notification channels, refer to Alert notification channels.

Upgrading to v7.3

AWS CloudWatch data source

The AWS CloudWatch data source’s authentication scheme has changed in Grafana 7.3. Most importantly the authentication method ARN has been removed, and a new one has been added: AWS SDK Default. Existing data source configurations using the former will fallback to the latter. Assuming an IAM role will still work though, and the old ARN method would use the default AWS SDK authentication method under the hood anyway.

Since ARN has been removed as an authentication method, we have instead made it into an option for providing the ARN of an IAM role to assume. This works independently of the authentication method you choose.

The new authentication method, AWS SDK Default, uses the default AWS Go SDK credential chain, which at the time of writing looks for credentials in the following order:

Environment variables.
Shared credentials file.
If your application uses an ECS task definition or RunTask API operation, IAM role for tasks.
If your application is running on an Amazon EC2 instance, IAM role for Amazon EC2.

The other authentication methods, Access and secret key and Credentials file, have changed in regards to fallbacks. If these methods fail, they no longer fallback to other methods. e.g. environment variables. If you want fallbacks, you should use AWS SDK Default instead.

For more information and details, please refer to Using AWS CloudWatch in Grafana.

User invites database migration

The database table temp_user, that tracks user invites, is subject to a database migration that changes the data type of the created and updated columns:

Database	Old data type	New data type
Sqlite	DATETIME	INTEGER
MySQL	DATETIME	INT
Postgres	TIMESTAMP	INTEGER

Please note that if downgrading Grafana to an earlier version, you have to manually change the data type of the created and updated columns back to old data type , otherwise the user invite feature doesn’t function as expected.

Snapshots database migration

The database table dashboard_snapshot, that stores dashboard snapshots, adds a new column dashboard_encrypted for storing an encrypted snapshot. NOTE: Only snapshots created on Grafana 7.3 or later will use this column to store snapshot data as encrypted. Snapshots created before this version will be unaffected and remain unencrypted.

Use of the root group in the Docker images

The Grafana Docker images use the root group instead of the grafana group. This change can cause builds to break for users who extend the Grafana Docker image. Learn more about this change in the Docker migration instructions

Upgrading to v7.5

VictorOps Alert Notifier

The VictorOps alert notifier now accepts a severity tag, in a similar vein to the PagerDuty alert notifier. The possible values are outlined in the VictorOps docs.

For example, if you want an alert to be INFO-level in VictorOps, create a tag severity=info (case-insensitive) in your alert.

Upgrading to v8.0

Plugins

Grafana now requires all plugins to be signed. If a plugin is not signed Grafana will not load/start it. This is an additional security measure to make sure plugin files and binaries haven’t been tampered with. All Grafana Labs authored plugins, including Enterprise plugins, are now signed. It’s possible to allow unsigned plugins using a configuration setting, but is something we strongly advise against doing. For more information about this setting, refer to allow loading unsigned plugins.

Grafana Live

Grafana now maintains persistent WebSocket connections for real-time messaging needs.

When WebSocket connection is established, Grafana checks the request Origin header due to security reasons (for example, to prevent hijacking of WebSocket connection). If you have a properly defined public URL (root_url server option) then the origin check should successfully pass for WebSocket requests originating from public URL pages. In case of an unsuccessful origin check, Grafana returns a 403 error. It’s also possible to add a list of additional origin patterns for the origin check.

To handle many concurrent WebSocket connections you may need to tune your OS settings or infrastructure. Grafana Live is enabled by default and supports 100 concurrent WebSocket connections max to avoid possible problems with the file descriptor OS limit. As soon as your setup meets the requirements to scale the number of persistent connections this limit can be increased. You also have an option to disable Grafana Live.

Refer to Grafana Live configuration documentation for more information.

Postgres, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server data sources

Grafana v8.0 changes the underlying data structure to data frames for the Postgres, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server data sources. As a result, a Time series query result gets returned in a wide format. To make the visualizations work as they did before, you might have to do some manual migrations.

For any existing panels/visualizations using a Time series query, where the time column is only needed for filtering the time range, for example, using the bar gauge or pie chart panel, we recommend that you use a Table query instead and exclude the time column as a field in the response. Refer to this issue comment for detailed instructions and workarounds.

Prefix added to series names

When you have a query where there’s a time value and a numeric value selected together with a string value that’s not named metric, the graph panel renders series names as value <hostname> rather than just <hostname> which was the case before Grafana 8.

SELECT
  $__timeGroup("createdAt",'10m'),
  avg(value) as "value",
  hostname
FROM grafana_metric
WHERE $__timeFilter("createdAt")
GROUP BY time, hostname
ORDER BY time

There are two possible workarounds to resolve this problem:

In Grafana v8.0.3, use an alias of the string column selected as metric. for example, hostname as metric.
Use the Standard field options/Display name to format the alias. For the preceding example query, you would use ${__field.labels.hostname} option.

For more information, refer to the our relational databases documentation of Postgres, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server.

Upgrading to v8.1

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.

Restart Grafana

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 12:26:57 +0000

Restart Grafana

Users often need to restart Grafana after they have made configuration changes. This topic provides detailed instructions on how to restart Grafana supported operating systems.

Windows

To restart Grafana:

Open the Services app.
Right-click on the Grafana service.
In the context menu, click Restart.

macOS

Restart methods differ depending on whether you installed Grafana using Homebrew or as standalone macOS binaries.

Restart Grafana using Homebrew

Use the Homebrew restart command:

brew services restart grafana

Restart standalone macOS binaries

To restart Grafana:

Open a terminal and go to the directory where you copied the install setup files.
Run the command:

./bin/grafana-server web

Linux

Restart methods differ depending on whether your Linux system uses systemd or init.d.

Restart the server with systemd

To restart the service and verify that the service has started, run the following commands:

sudo systemctl restart grafana-server
sudo systemctl status grafana-server

Alternately, you can configure the Grafana server to restart at boot:

sudo systemctl enable grafana-server.service

Note: SUSE or OpenSUSE users may need to start the server with the systemd method, then use the init.d method to configure Grafana to start at boot.

Restart the server with init.d

To restart the service, run the following command:

sudo service grafana-server restart

sudo /etc/init.d/grafana-server restart

Verify the status:

sudo service grafana-server status

sudo /etc/init.d/grafana-server status

Alternately, you can configure the Grafana server to restart at boot:

sudo update-rc.d grafana-server defaults

Docker

To restart the Grafana service, use the docker restart command.

docker restart grafana

Alternately, you can use the docker compose restart command to restart Grafana. For more information, refer to docker compose documentation.

Docker compose example

Configure your docker-compose.yml file. For example:

grafana:
  image: grafana/grafana:latest
  ports:
    - "3000:3000"
  environment:
    - TERM=linux
    - GF_INSTALL_PLUGINS=grafana-clock-panel,grafana-piechart-panel,grafana-polystat-panel

Start the Grafana server:

docker-compose up

This starts the Grafana server along with the three plugins specified in the YAML file.

To restart the running container, use this command:

docker-compose restart grafana