Increase Data retention and upgrade PMM version

I just took over as the admin for PMM running in our organization. We are running the version 2.13 on a PMM Amazon AMI. It’s not running in a container from what I see but directly on the server. I am trying to increase the data retention from 30 days to 60 days. I am not seeing settings/advanced setting under Configurations in the GUI. Can anyone point me to the right documentation to increase the data retention?

Also, can someone point me to documentation where PMM is not running in docker containers?

Thanks.

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Welcome!!! I have to admit…I can’t recall how to increase retention on AMI’s without the graphical method (I know you could pass an environment variable for docker but that wont’ work the same for AMI). I asked this question internally as well so if no one sees this post they can’t ignore the slack!

Unless there’s a reason you can’t upgrade, I’d highly recommend you look at the latest PMM as there’s been a TON of improvements since then (I can hear a colleague of mine in my ear nagging about a bug specific to Postgres that might be the reason you have to stay at such an old version) including the ability to just change the value in the UI.

The main docs you’re looking for are here, but are geared towards setting up and most things run the same after setup.

When I get a reply internally I’ll post it here unless they reply here directly!

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Ok, didn’t get a great answer internally so I spun up a copy of 2.13.0. We actually do have a GUI option to change the retention period in 2.13.0 so it’s possible you’re looking in the wrong place.

From the home dashboard, look in the upper right corner you’ll see a “PMM” menu and when clicked, you should see “PMM Settings”; select that. From the PMM Settings page you’ll see one of the tabs on the left is “Advanced Settings” and the very first option should be to increase the data retention in days. Change to 60 and hit apply and that should do it!

I did get a lot of people saying “upgrade that instance” but I get that you’re just inheriting it and there may be a good reason you cannot. If you’d care to share why you can’t upgrade we can relay that to the product team for prioritization as you’re missing out on a TON of great new features with more coming!

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Thanks so much. I was able to find the setting to increase the retention and increased it.

I do intend to upgrade to the latest version, my internal customers have been asking for it. I am looking for a good set of documentation. Really appreciate you sending the link. However, unless I am missing something, I am not seeing instructions on how to upgrade the PMM software version on the server. Other documentation that I have found basically covers upgrading the PMM running on docker containers.

Will backing up the data, spinning up a new AMI with latest version and restoring the data to it work? Is there a better way to do an in place upgrade on the existing EC2?

Thanks for your help.

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