Grafana 13 makes dynamic dashboards, Git Sync, and Advisor broadly available

Grafana Labs released Grafana 13 on April 21 with several features moving into general availability. The release overview makes the upgrade concrete: dynamic dashboards are enabled by default, Git Sync is generally available in every edition, and Grafana Advisor now provides built-in health checks.

Dashboard storage changes deserve a rehearsal

Dynamic dashboards use Grafana’s version 2 dashboard schema and are on by default in Grafana Cloud and self-managed deployments. Existing version 1 dashboards migrate when they are loaded. Visualization suggestions are also generally available and use query metadata to propose suitable chart types.

That combination can change both stored dashboard representations and the editing workflow. Before upgrading, restore representative production dashboards into a staging instance. Load each dashboard to exercise migration, save a controlled copy, and review the resulting diff. Test variables, data links, alert rules, and provisioned resources rather than stopping after the panels render.

Operations features widen the upgrade surface

Git Sync is generally available across Grafana editions. The release adds GitHub App authentication and supports GitLab, Bitbucket, and plain Git repositories, so teams can keep dashboards and other resources in version control. Grafana Advisor is also generally available, with health checks for failing data sources, outdated plugins, and misconfigured single sign-on.

These features are useful acceptance checks. Intentionally point a staging data source at an invalid endpoint and confirm Advisor identifies the failure. Then exercise a Git-backed dashboard change through the same review path used in production.

Grafana 13 also includes public and private previews. Teams should record which features are GA before making them operational dependencies. A successful upgrade proves the schema migration, integrations, authentication, alerts, and Git workflow together—not merely that the home page loads.