Grafana 9.1: What's New, Release History & Support Lifecycle

What Is New in Grafana 9.1

How do I use service accounts and JWT embedding in Grafana 9.1?

Service accounts are now generally available and can be paired with JWT URL embedding for seamless machine-to-machine authentication.

• Create a service account via the UI or API; you can generate multiple tokens with independent expiration dates.
• Assign roles (e.g., Viewer, Editor) to limit what the service account can do, especially in Enterprise where RBAC applies.
• Embed a dashboard by appending ?aut_token=YOUR_JWT to the URL; Grafana validates the JWT and enforces the user's permissions.

curl -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer $API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name":"my-service","role":"Editor"}' \
  https://grafana.example.com/api/serviceaccounts

Note: JWT URL embedding and the allow_embedding flag are not available on Grafana Cloud; use public dashboards instead.

What improvements does Grafana 9.1 bring to dashboard search and navigation?

Panel-title search and starred-dashboard shortcuts make finding the right visual faster.

• Enable the panelTitleSearch feature toggle to build an in-memory index of all dashboards; searches now match panel titles as well as dashboard titles.
• Starred dashboards appear directly in the left navigation bar for one-click access.
• Search performance is noticeably better because the heavy SQL queries have been replaced with the in-memory index.

In practice, teams that rely on large numbers of dashboards see a reduction in search latency from seconds to sub-second responses.

Which new panel types and visual features are available in Grafana 9.1?

Heatmap, Geomap, trace-to-metrics, and the APM table expand the observability toolbox.

• Heatmap: Now GA, with improved rendering speed and support for exemplars.
• Geomap: New measurement tools let you calculate distances and areas directly on the map.
• Trace-to-metrics (beta): Link spans to metric queries by enabling the traceToMetrics toggle; each span shows a clickable metric link.
• APM Table (beta): Tempo's Service Graph tab now includes a table of RED metrics (Rate, Errors, Duration) with quick links to Prometheus queries and Tempo searches.

These panels are especially useful for SRE teams that need to correlate traces with latency metrics without leaving Grafana.

How does Grafana 9.1 enhance security and role-based access control for Enterprise users?

Enterprise adds RBAC for app plugins, API-driven encryption-key rotation, verbose audit logging, and LDAP wildcard sync.

• RBAC now covers app plugins (OnCall, Synthetics) - you can grant or deny access at the plugin level.
• Rotate database encryption keys via /api/admin/encryption/rotate to re-encrypt stored secrets without downtime.
• Enable verbose mode in the audit log to capture every GET request and page view for compliance.
• LDAP group sync supports wildcards, allowing a single Grafana team to map many AD groups.
• AzureAD SAML Single Logout now supports HTTP-Redirect binding for smoother logout flows.

Watch out for the need to update automation scripts that previously assumed static encryption keys; the new API call simplifies key-rotation pipelines.