---
title: Upgrade Fleet-managed Elastic Agents
description: With Fleet upgrade capabilities, you can view and select agents that are out of date, and trigger selected agents to download, install, and run the new...
url: https://www.elastic.co/docs/reference/fleet/upgrade-elastic-agent
products:
  - Elastic Agent
  - Fleet
applies_to:
  - Elastic Cloud Serverless: Generally available
  - Elastic Stack: Generally available
---

# Upgrade Fleet-managed Elastic Agents
<tip>
  Want to upgrade a standalone agent instead? See [Upgrade standalone Elastic Agents](https://www.elastic.co/docs/reference/fleet/upgrade-standalone).
</tip>

With Fleet upgrade capabilities, you can view and select agents that are out of date, and trigger selected agents to download, install, and run the new version. You can trigger upgrades to happen immediately, or specify a maintenance window during which the upgrades will occur. If your Elastic Stack subscription level supports it, you can schedule upgrades to occur at a specific date and time.
In most failure cases the Elastic Agent may retry an upgrade after a short wait. The wait durations between retries are: 1m, 5m, 10m, 15m, 30m, and 1h. During this time, the Elastic Agent may show up as "retrying" in the Fleet UI. As well, if agent upgrades have been detected to have stalled, you can restart the upgrade process for a [single agent](#restart-upgrade-single) or in bulk for [multiple agents](#restart-upgrade-multiple).
This approach simplifies the process of keeping your agents up to date. It also saves you time because you don’t need third-party tools or processes to manage upgrades.
By default, Elastic Agents require internet access to perform binary upgrades from Fleet. However, you can host your own artifacts repository and configure Elastic Agents to download binaries from it. For more information, refer to [Air-gapped environments](https://www.elastic.co/docs/reference/fleet/air-gapped).
<note>
  The upgrade feature is not supported for upgrading DEB/RPM packages or Docker images. Refer to [Upgrade RPM and DEB system packages](#upgrade-system-packages) to upgrade a DEB or RPM package manually.
</note>

For a detailed view of the Elastic Agent upgrade process and the interactions between Fleet, Elastic Agent, and Elasticsearch, refer to the [Communications amongst components](https://github.com/elastic/elastic-agent/blob/main/docs/upgrades.md) diagram in the `elastic-agent` GitHub repository.

## Restrictions

Note the following restrictions with upgrading an Elastic Agent:
- Elastic Agent cannot be upgraded to a minor version higher than the currently installed minor version of Fleet Server. For example, you can enroll 9.1.5 Elastic Agents with a 9.1.0 Fleet Server, but not 9.2.0 Elastic Agents. So while you can install newer maintenance releases, you cannot install newer minor versions. Before you upgrade Elastic Agents to a newer minor version, you should first upgrade any agents that are acting as a [Fleet Server](https://www.elastic.co/docs/reference/fleet/fleet-server) (any agents associated with a Fleet Server policy).
- To be upgradeable, Elastic Agent must not be running inside a container.
- To be upgradeable in a Linux environment, Elastic Agent must be running as a service. The Linux Tar install instructions for Elastic Agent provided in Fleet include the commands to run it as a service. Elastic Agent RPM and DEB system packages cannot be upgraded through Fleet.

These restrictions apply whether you are upgrading Elastic Agents individually or in bulk. In the event that an upgrade isn’t eligible, Fleet generates a warning message when you attempt the upgrade.

## Upgrading Elastic Agent

To upgrade your Elastic Agents, go to **Management** → **Fleet** → **Agents** in Kibana. You can perform the following upgrade-related actions:

| User action                                                               | Result                                                                                  |
|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| [Upgrade a single Elastic Agent](#upgrade-an-agent)                       | Upgrade a single agent to a specific version.                                           |
| [Do a rolling upgrade of multiple Elastic Agents](#rolling-agent-upgrade) | Do a rolling upgrade of multiple agents over a specific time period.                    |
| [Schedule an upgrade](#schedule-agent-upgrade)                            | Schedule an upgrade of one or more agents to begin at a specific time.                  |
| [View upgrade status](#view-upgrade-status)                               | View the detailed status of an agent upgrade, including upgrade metrics and agent logs. |
| [Restart an upgrade for a single agent](#restart-upgrade-single)          | Restart an upgrade process that has stalled for a single agent.                         |
| [Restart an upgrade for multiple agents](#restart-upgrade-multiple)       | Do a bulk restart of the upgrade process for a set of agents.                           |

With an [Elastic subscription level](https://www.elastic.co/subscriptions) that supports **automatic agent binary upgrades**, you can also configure an automatic upgrade of a percentage of the Elastic Agents enrolled in an Elastic Agent policy. For more information, refer to [Auto-upgrade agents enrolled in a policy](#auto-upgrade-agents). <applies-to>Elastic Stack: Generally available since 9.1</applies-to>

## Upgrade a single Elastic Agent

1. On the **Agents** tab, agents that can be upgraded are identified with an **Upgrade available** indicator.
   ![Indicator on the UI showing that the agent can be upgraded](https://www.elastic.co/docs/reference/fleet/images/upgrade-available-indicator.png)
   You can also click the **Upgrade available** button to filter the list agents to only those that currently can be upgraded.
2. From the **Actions** menu next to the agent, choose **Upgrade agent**.
   ![Menu for upgrading a single Elastic Agent](https://www.elastic.co/docs/reference/fleet/images/upgrade-single-agent.png)
3. In the Upgrade agent window, select or specify an upgrade version and click **Upgrade agent**.
   Kibana provides a list of the Elastic Agent versions available for upgrade. A version number ending with a build identifier in the format `+build{yyyymmddhhmm}` indicates an [independent Elastic Agent release version](/docs/reference/fleet/fleet-agent-release-process#independent-agent-releases).
   In certain cases, the latest available Elastic Agent version may not be recognized by Kibana. For instance, this occurs when the Kibana version is lower than the Elastic Agent version. You can specify a custom version for Elastic Agent to upgrade to by entering the version into the **Upgrade version** text field.
   ![Menu for upgrading a single Elastic Agent](https://www.elastic.co/docs/reference/fleet/images/upgrade-agent-custom.png)


## Do a rolling upgrade of multiple Elastic Agents

You can do rolling upgrades to avoid exhausting network resources when updating a large number of Elastic Agents.
1. On the **Agents** tab, select multiple agents, and click **Actions**.
2. From the **Actions** menu, choose to upgrade the agents.
3. In the Upgrade agents window, select an upgrade version.
4. Select the amount of time available for the maintenance window. The upgrades are spread out uniformly across this maintenance window to avoid exhausting network resources.
   To force selected agents to upgrade immediately when the upgrade is triggered, select **Immediately**. Avoid using this setting for batches of more than 10 agents.
5. Upgrade the agents.

Agents in a rollout period have the status `Updating` until the upgrade is complete, even if the upgrade has not started yet.

## Schedule an upgrade

<note>
  This feature is available only for certain subscription levels. For more information, check **Scheduled agent binary upgrades** on the [Elastic subscriptions](https://www.elastic.co/subscriptions) page.
</note>

1. On the **Agents** tab, select one or more agents, and click **Actions**.
2. From the **Actions** menu, choose to schedule an upgrade.
   ![Menu for scheduling Elastic Agent upgrades](https://www.elastic.co/docs/reference/fleet/images/schedule-upgrade.png)
3. In the Upgrade window, select an upgrade version.
4. Select a maintenance window. For more information, refer to [Do a rolling upgrade of multiple Elastic Agents](#rolling-agent-upgrade).
5. Set the date and time when you want the upgrade to begin.
6. Click **Schedule**.


## View upgrade status

On the Agents tab, when you trigger an upgrade, agents that are upgrading have the status `Updating` until the upgrade is complete, and then the status changes back to `Healthy`.
Agents on version 8.12 and higher that are currently upgrading additionally show a detailed upgrade status indicator.
![Detailed state of an upgrading agent](https://www.elastic.co/docs/reference/fleet/images/upgrade-states.png)

The following table explains the upgrade states in the order that they can occur.

| State               | Description                                                                                                                                 |
|---------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Upgrade requested   | Elastic Agent has received the upgrade notice from Fleet.                                                                                   |
| Upgrade scheduled   | Elastic Agent has received the upgrade notice from Fleet and the upgrade will start at the indicated time.                                  |
| Upgrade downloading | Elastic Agent is downloading the archive containing the new version artifact.                                                               |
| Upgrade extracting  | Elastic Agent is extracting the new version artifact from the downloaded archive.                                                           |
| Upgrade replacing   | Elastic Agent is currently replacing the former, pre-upgrade agent artifact with the new one.                                               |
| Upgrade restarting  | Elastic Agent has been replaced with a new version and is now restarting in order to apply the update.                                      |
| Upgrade monitoring  | The newly upgraded Elastic Agent has started and is being monitored for errors.                                                             |
| Upgrade rolled back | The upgrade was unsuccessful. Elastic Agent is being rolled back to the former, pre-upgrade version.                                        |
| Upgrade failed      | An error has been detected in the newly upgraded Elastic Agent and the attempt to roll the upgrade back to the previous version has failed. |

Under routine circumstances, an Elastic Agent upgrade happens quickly. You typically will not see the agent transition through each of the upgrade states. The detailed upgrade status can be a useful tool especially if you need to diagnose the state of an agent that may have become stuck, or appears to have become stuck, during the upgrade process.
Beside the upgrade status indicator, you can hover your cursor over the information icon to get more detail about the upgrade.
![Granular upgrade details shown as hover text (agent has requested an upgrade)](https://www.elastic.co/docs/reference/fleet/images/upgrade-detailed-state01.png)

![Granular upgrade details shown as hover text (agent is restarting to apply the update)](https://www.elastic.co/docs/reference/fleet/images/upgrade-detailed-state02.png)

When you upgrade agents from versions below 8.12, the upgrade details are not provided.
![An earlier release agent showing only the updating state without additional details](https://www.elastic.co/docs/reference/fleet/images/upgrade-non-detailed.png)

When upgrading many agents, you can fine tune the maintenance window by viewing stats and metrics about the upgrade:
1. On the **Agents** tab, click the host name to view agent details. If you don’t see the host name, try refreshing the page.
2. Click **View more agent metrics** to open the **[Elastic Agent] Agent metrics** dashboard.

If an upgrade appears to have stalled, you can [restart it](#restart-upgrade-single).
If an upgrade fails, you can view the agent logs to find the reason:
1. In Fleet, in the Host column, click the agent’s name.
2. Open the **Logs** tab.
3. Search for failures.
   ![Agent logs showing upgrade failure](https://www.elastic.co/docs/reference/fleet/images/upgrade-failure.png)


## Restart an upgrade for a single agent

An Elastic Agent upgrade process may sometimes stall. This can happen for various reasons, including, for example, network connectivity issues or a delayed shutdown.
When an Elastic Agent upgrade has been detected to be stuck, a warning indicator appears on the UI. When this occurs, you can restart the upgrade from either the **Agents** tab on the main Fleet page or from the details page for any individual agent.
There is a required 10 minute cooldown period in between restart attempts. After launching a restart action you need to wait for the cooldown to complete before initiating another restart.
Restart from main Fleet page:
1. From the **Actions** menu next to an agent that is stuck in an `Updating` state, choose **Restart upgrade**.
2. In the **Restart upgrade** window, select an upgrade version and click **Upgrade agent**.

Restart from an agent details page:
1. In Fleet, in the **Host** column, click the agent’s name. On the **Agent details** tab, a warning notice appears if the agent is detected to have stalled during an upgrade.
2. Click **Restart upgrade**.
3. In the **Restart upgrade** window, select an upgrade version and click **Upgrade agent**.


## Restart an upgrade for multiple agents

When the upgrade process for multiple agents has been detected to have stalled, you can restart the upgrade process in bulk. As with [restarting an upgrade for a single agent](#restart-upgrade-single), a 10 minute cooldown period is enforced between restarts.
1. On the **Agents** tab, select any set of the agents that are indicated to be stuck, and click **Actions**.
2. From the **Actions** menu, select **Restart upgrade <number> agents**.
3. In the **Restart upgrade…** window, select an upgrade version.
4. Select the amount of time available for the maintenance window. The upgrades are spread out uniformly across this maintenance window to avoid exhausting network resources.
   To force selected agents to upgrade immediately when the upgrade is triggered, select **Immediately**. Avoid using this setting for batches of more than 10 agents.
5. Restart the upgrades.


## Auto-upgrade agents enrolled in a policy

<applies-to>
  - Elastic Stack: Generally available since 9.1
</applies-to>

<note>
  This feature is available only for certain subscription levels. For more information, check **Automatic agent binary upgrades** on the [Elastic subscriptions](https://www.elastic.co/subscriptions) page.
</note>

To configure an automatic rollout of a new minor or patch version to a percentage of the agents enrolled in your Elastic Agent policy. follow these steps:
1. In Kibana, go to **Management** → **Fleet** → **Agent policies**.
2. Select the agent policy for which you want to configure an automatic agent upgrade.
3. On the agent policy's details page, find **Auto-upgrade agents**, and select **Manage** next to it.
4. In the **Manage auto-upgrade agents** window, click **Add target version**.
5. From the **Target agent version** dropdown, select the minor or patch version to which you want to upgrade a percentage of your agents.
6. In the **% of agents to upgrade** field, enter the percentage of active agents you want to upgrade to this target version.
   Note that:
   - Unenrolling, unenrolled, inactive, and uninstalled agents are not included in the count. For example, if you set the target upgrade percentage to 50% for a policy with 10 active agents and 10 inactive agents, the target is met when 5 active agents are upgraded.
- Rounding is applied, and the actual percentage of the upgraded agents may vary slightly. For example, if you set the target upgrade percentage to 30% for a policy with 25 active agents, the target is met when 8 active agents are upgraded (32%).
7. You can then add a different target version, and specify the percentage of agents you want to be upgraded to that version. The total percentage of agents to be upgraded cannot exceed 100%.
8. Click **Save**.

Once the configuration is saved, an asynchronous task runs every 30 minutes, upgrading the agents in the policy to the specified target version.
If the number of agents to be upgraded is greater than or equal to 10, a rollout period is automatically applied. The rollout duration is either 10 minutes or `nAgents * 0.03` seconds, whichever is greater.
In case of any failed upgrades, the upgrades are retried with exponential backoff mechanism until the upgrade is successful, or the maximum number of retries is reached. Note that the maximum number of retries is the number of [configured retry delays](#auto-upgrade-settings).
<note>
  Only active agents enrolled in the policy are considered for the automatic upgrade.If new agents are assigned to the policy, the number of Elastic Agents to be upgraded is adjusted according to the set percentages.
</note>


### Configure the auto-upgrade settings

On self-managed and cloud deployments of Elastic Stack, you can configure the default task interval and the retry delays of the automatic upgrade in the [Kibana Fleet settings](https://www.elastic.co/docs/reference/kibana/configuration-reference/fleet-settings). For example:
```yml
xpack.fleet.autoUpgrades.taskInterval: 15m 
xpack.fleet.autoUpgrades.retryDelays: ['5m', '10m', '20m'] 
```

For more information, refer to the [Kibana configuration reference](https://www.elastic.co/docs/reference/kibana/configuration-reference).

### View the status of the automatic upgrade

You can view the status of the automatic upgrade in the following ways:
- On the agent policy's details page, find **Auto-upgrade agents**, and select **Manage** to open the **Manage auto-upgrade agents** window.
  The status of the upgrade is displayed next to the specified target version and percentage, and includes the percentage of agents that have already been upgraded.
  To view any failed upgrades, hover over the **Upgrade failed** status, then click **Go to upgrade**.
- On the **Fleet** → **Agents** page, click **Agent activity** to open a flyout showing logs of the Elastic Agent activity and the progress of the automatic agent upgrade.


## Upgrade RPM and DEB system packages

If you have installed and enrolled Elastic Agent using either a DEB (for a Debian-based Linux distribution) or RPM (for a RedHat-based Linux distribution) install package, the upgrade cannot be managed by Fleet. Instead, you can perform the upgrade using these steps.
For installation steps refer to [Install Fleet-managed Elastic Agents](https://www.elastic.co/docs/reference/fleet/install-fleet-managed-elastic-agent).

### Upgrade a DEB Elastic Agent installation:

1. Download the Elastic Agent Debian install package for the release that you want to upgrade to:
   ```bash
   curl -L -O https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/beats/elastic-agent/elastic-agent-9.3.0-amd64.deb
   ```
2. Upgrade Elastic Agent to the target release:
   ```bash
   sudo dpkg -i elastic-agent-9.3.0-amd64.deb
   ```
3. Confirm in Fleet that the agent has been upgraded to the target version. Note that the **Upgrade agent** option in the **Actions** menu next to the agent will be disabled since [fleet]-managed upgrades are not supported for this package type.


### Upgrade an RPM Elastic Agent installation:

1. Download the Elastic Agent RPM install package for the release that you want to upgrade to:
   ```bash
   curl -L -O https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/beats/elastic-agent/elastic-agent-9.3.0-x86_64.rpm
   ```
2. Upgrade Elastic Agent to the target release:
   ```bash
   sudo rpm -U elastic-agent-9.3.0-x86_64.rpm
   ```
3. Confirm in Fleet that the agent has been upgraded to the target version. Note that the **Upgrade agent** option in the **Actions** menu next to the agent will be disabled since Fleet-managed upgrades are not supported for this package type.