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Migrate saved objectsedit

Each time you upgrade Kibana, an upgrade migration is performed to ensure that all saved objects are compatible with the new version.

Kibana includes an Upgrade Assistant to help you prepare for an upgrade. To access the assistant, go to Stack Management > Upgrade Assistant.

Kibana 7.12.0 and later uses a new migration process and index naming scheme. Before you upgrade, read the documentation for your version of Kibana.

The kibana.index and xpack.tasks.index configuration settings are obsolete and no longer taken into account in 8.x. If you are using custom index names, please perform the necessary adaptations before attempting to upgrade to 8.x.

How saved objects migrations workedit

When you start a new Kibana installation, an upgrade migration is performed before starting plugins or serving HTTP traffic. Before you upgrade, shut down old nodes to prevent losing acknowledged writes. To reduce the likelihood of old nodes losing acknowledged writes, Kibana 7.12.0 and later adds a write block to the outdated index.

Saved objects are stored in multiple indices. Whilst all of them start with the .kibana* prefix, other .kibana* indices exist, which are not used to store saved objects. The following tables lists the saved objects indices used by each Kibana version.

Table 1. Saved object indices and aliases per Kibana version

Upgrading from version Index Aliases

6.5.0 through 7.3.x

.kibana_N

.kibana

7.4.0 through 7.11.x

.kibana_N
.kibana_task_manager_N

.kibana
.kibana_task_manager

7.11.x through 8.7.x

.kibana_{kibana_version}_001
.kibana_task_manager_{kibana_version}_001

.kibana, .kibana_{kibana_version}
.kibana_task_manager, .kibana_task_manager_{kibana_version}

8.8.0+

.kibana_{kibana_version}_001
.kibana_alerting_cases_{kibana_version}_001 .kibana_analytics_{kibana_version}_001 .kibana_ingest_{kibana_version}_001 .kibana_task_manager_{kibana_version}_001 .kibana_security_solution_{kibana_version}_001

.kibana, .kibana_{kibana_version}
.kibana_alerting_cases, .kibana_alerting_cases_{kibana_version} .kibana_analytics, .kibana_analytics_{kibana_version} .kibana_ingest, .kibana_ingest_{kibana_version} .kibana_task_manager, .kibana_task_manager_{kibana_version} .kibana_security_solution, .kibana_security_solution_{kibana_version}

Starting on 7.11.0, each of the saved objects indices has a couple of aliases, e.g. the .kibana_8.8.0_001 index has a default alias .kibana and a version alias .kibana_8.8.0. The default aliases (e.g. .kibana and .kibana_task_manager) always point to the most up-to-date saved object indices. Then, version aliases are aligned with the deployed Kibana version.

Starting on 8.6.0, index names aren’t necessarily aligned with the deployed Kibana version. When updates on a certain index are compatible, Kibana will keep the existing index instead of creating a new one. This allows for a more efficient upgrade process. The following example illustrates a completely valid state for a 8.8.0 deployment:

  • .kibana_8.8.0_001 index, with .kibana and .kibana_8.8.0 aliases.
  • .kibana_task_manager_8.7.0_001 index, with .kibana_task_manager and .kibana_task_manager_8.8.0 aliases.

Starting on 8.8.0, Kibana splits the main saved object index into multiple ones, as depicted on the table above. When upgrading from a previous version, the Kibana migration process will reindex some saved objects from the .kibana index into the new indices, depending on their types. Note that the .kibana index still exists, and it continues to store multiple saved object types.

Old Kibana indicesedit

As a deployment is gradually upgraded, multiple Kibana indices are created in Elasticsearch: (.kibana_1, .kibana_2, .kibana_7.12.0_001, .kibana_7.13.0_001, .kibana_8.0.0_001 etc). Kibana only uses those indices that the default and version aliases point to. The other, older Kibana saved object indices can be safely deleted, but are left around as a matter of historical record, and to facilitate rolling Kibana back to a previous version.

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