Grafana is a widely-used open-source observability platform for visualizing metrics, logs, and traces across diverse data sources. It provides an interactive UI to create rich dashboards, set up alerts, and correlate data from multiple systems. Thanks to an extensible plugin ecosystem, Grafana integrates with a broad array of databases and services, making it a cornerstone of many monitoring stacks. 

However, frequent releases – while introducing valuable new features and security patches – can also bring breaking changes or deprecations that make upgrades challenging. In this post, we’ll show you how Chkk’s Operational Safety Platform offers an end-to-end solution for managing self-managed Grafana upgrades. From curated release notes and preflight checks to structured Upgrade Templates and preverification, Chkk helps you confidently upgrade Grafana without the risk of unexpected downtime or data loss.

Chkk’s Coverage for Grafana

Curated Release Notes

Chkk continuously monitors Grafana’s official releases and filters out the noise to surface critical changes including security patches, feature updates, and any deprecated APIs or breaking alterations. Instead of going through lengthy changelogs, you receive concise, actionable summaries highlighting what truly matters for your deployment. By focusing on critical changes, Chkk takes the guesswork out of tracking Grafana updates and helps you gauge the urgency and safe timing for each upgrade.

Preflight & Postflight Checks

Before you upgrade Grafana, Chkk performs preflight checks to inspect your Kubernetes version, Grafana configuration, dashboards, and installed plugins to detect any compatibility issues with the target release. If a certain authentication setting is deprecated or a plugin version isn’t supported in the new Grafana, you’ll be warned in advance. 

After the upgrade, Chkk’s automated postflight checks confirm that Grafana is fully operational – verifying that dashboards load correctly, data source connections are healthy, and alert rules are firing as expected. This end-to-end validation minimizes the chance of only discovering problems after the upgrade has taken effect, thereby reducing the risk of downtime or broken functionality.

Version Recommendations

Chkk continuously tracks Grafana’s release lifecycle and support timeline. When your current Grafana version is approaching end-of-life or missing critical patches, Chkk will proactively recommend a stable version to upgrade to. You’ll receive alerts well before your current version becomes unsupported, along with suggestions for the best minor version to minimize breaking changes. Following these recommendations helps you stay ahead of critical updates and avoid running outdated, risky versions of Grafana.

Upgrade Templates

Chkk provides structured Upgrade Templates tailored for Grafana, supporting two main upgrade strategies:

• In-place Upgrades: Perform a rolling upgrade of your Grafana deployment by incrementally updating pods or instances to the new version. This sequential approach ensures continuous availability, as Grafana nodes are upgraded one at a time, with thorough health checks at each step to confirm the system remains stable before proceeding.
• Blue-Green Deployments: Stand up a parallel Grafana environment (the “green” cluster) running the new version while your current Grafana continues to operate (the “blue” cluster). Once the new version is validated and running smoothly, you seamlessly cut over user traffic to the updated Grafana. 

Each Chkk Upgrade Template comes with step-by-step instructions, pre- and post-upgrade checkpoints, and built-in rollback procedures. 

Preverification

For major version jumps or complex Grafana upgrades, Chkk’s preverification feature conducts a full trial run of the upgrade in a “digital twin” environment that mirrors your production setup. Chkk will clone your Grafana configuration, dashboards, and data source definitions into this isolated sandbox and then apply the upgrade there first. This simulation helps expose any issues before they affect your live system. If something fails or behaves unexpectedly in the dry-run, you’ll get a report pinpointing the problematic components. By ironing out these issues ahead of time, you can proceed with the real Grafana upgrade confident that it has already been validated on a staging replica of your environment.

Supported Packages

No matter how you deploy Grafana, Chkk integrates seamlessly into your workflow. It supports Grafana installations managed via Helm charts, Kustomize overlays, or even plain Kubernetes YAML manifests. Chkk understands custom images from private registries and specialized builds of Grafana, so you won’t have to abandon your existing deployment practices. If you use GitOps or store your configurations in Git, Chkk can analyze those manifests and automatically propose the necessary changes to accommodate the new version. This unified approach means you get consistent upgrade guidance across all your clusters and environments.

Chkk’s Core Benefits

Chkk Operational Safety Platform simplifies upgrades, reduces risk, and keeps your Kubernetes infrastructure operational. Here’s how that applies to Grafana upgrades:

• Speed Up and De-Risk Upgrades: Manually upgrading Grafana is time-consuming. Chkk accelerates the process and makes it safer by generating a detailed Upgrade Plan for each cluster. This plan spans all components—control plane, node versions, add-ons, and dependencies—and flags required changes, including recommended add-on versions or deprecated APIs. Instead of piecing together requirements from various release notes, teams receive a clear and actionable upgrade path. Chkk’s automation can cut upgrade preparation time by 3-5x, reducing weeks of planning to just days.
• Eliminate Redundant Effort: Many organizations squander countless hours on repetitive upgrade planning and research. By unifying upgrade workflows across teams, Chkk prevents duplication of effort and ensures that insights and processes don’t need to be reinvented with every release. This consolidation of efforts can save thousands of hours.
• Delegate, Parallelize, and Standardize Workflows: Chkk makes it easy to break out upgrade tasks among team members, all while maintaining standardized workflows that reduce confusion and boost efficiency. Engineers spend less time context-switching, and institutional knowledge is retained and shared effectively. During staff turnover or organizational changes, having a historical record of upgrade best practices prevents delays.
• Enhance Operational Safety: Kubernetes upgrades introduce inherent risk, but Chkk helps you detect and fix potential problems before they cause disruptions. With automated risk detection, your team can prevent hundreds of potential breakages annually—for every hundred clusters—saving significant break-fix effort. By focusing on proactive measures, you can innovate rather than constantly firefighting.

Simplify Upgrades for Grafana and 100s of Other Kubernetes Add-ons

Try Chkk Upgrade Copilot to experience how these extended capabilities can simplify your upgrade processes for Grafana and 100s of other Kubernetes Add-ons, Application Services, and Open Source Projects. We look forward to helping you achieve seamless, secure, and efficient operations. 

Click below to start for free or book a demo to learn more.