Upgrade with confidence: Strategies for updating your self-hosted Grafana instance

Grafana Labs has adopted a strategy of frequent releases for its self-hosted Grafana OSS and Grafana Enterprise users, offering new features, bug fixes, and security patches throughout the year rather than waiting for a single annual major release. There are three main release categories: minor releases every other month with new features and changes, major releases annually with comprehensive upgrade guides, and monthly patching releases for bug fixes and security patches. Users can choose their upgrade cadence based on their needs, with options like bi-monthly minor updates for access to the latest features or yearly major updates for a more consolidated change review. Release documentation, including changelogs and upgrade guides, is provided to assist users in making informed decisions, and the current version receives the highest level of support with all new features and bug fixes. The release schedule is updated annually, with the possibility of ad hoc releases for critical security incidents, and Grafana Cloud offers an alternative with a generous free tier.