Upgrade APM Server

We do our best to keep APM Server backward compatible between minor releases. Any exceptions will be explained in breaking changes.

Review the APM Server release notes and breaking changes for changes between your current APM Server version and the one you are upgrading to.
Review the APM stack breaking changes and Observability What’s new in 7.12 for important changes to other APM components.

The Elastic Stack (Elasticsearch and Kibana) must be upgraded before APM Server. See the Elastic Stack Installation and Upgrade Guide for guidance.
If applicable, read and understand the relevant APM Server upgrading guide. Guides exist for upgrades to versions 7.7, 7.0, and 6.5.
Install the new APM Server release.
Review the apm-server.yml configuration file. There may be newly added configuration options, and you’ll want to be aware of their default settings. See configuring for more information on available options.
If you set up index patterns and dashboards manually by running ./apm-server setup, rerun the command to update the index pattern and the dashboards.
Start the APM server.

When you start the APM server after upgrading, it creates new indices that use the current version, and applies the correct template automatically.