Migrate from Azure Managed Grafana Essential service tier

The Azure Managed Grafana Essential service tier is being transitioned to Azure Monitor dashboards with Grafana (available for free in Azure portal) and/or to Azure Managed Grafana Standard service tier. This article outlines the transition timeline, guides you through the transition options.

Two migration paths are available to ensure continuity of your Grafana dashboards and monitoring capabilities:

  • Upgrade to Standard service tier (recommended): Keep your existing Azure Managed Grafana workspace with enhanced reliability, SLA coverage, and additional features.
  • Migrate to Azure Monitor dashboards with Grafana: Move your dashboards to a free, Azure-native alternative.

Choose the option that best fits your requirements and budget.

We recommend that you plan your migration before the following key dates to prevent disruption:

  • October 31, 2025: Portal support for creating new Essential (preview) workspaces ends.
  • March 31, 2026: The Essential tier is no longer available and existing Essential workspaces will stop functioning.

Upgrading to the Standard service tier ensures continued reliability, SLA coverage, and enhanced features:

  • SLA-backed service and enterprise-level reliability with access to more data sources.
  • Two instance sizes available: X1 (default) and X2 (more capacity and alert rules).
  • A similar provisioning flow as Managed Grafana Essential service tier.
  • Additional features: zone redundancy, private endpoints, reporting, alerts, and more.

For pricing details, see Azure Managed Grafana pricing.

To upgrade to the Standard service tier, follow these steps in the Azure portal:

  1. Navigate to your Azure Managed Grafana workspace in the Azure portal.
  2. Go to Settings > Configuration > Pricing Plans.
  3. Choose Standard SKU. Optionally increase the instance size to X2.
  4. Save the changes.

Important

Downgrading from Standard SKU back to Essential (preview), or moving from a larger to a smaller instance size, is not supported.

Related content