Upgrading Sisense

Last updated: October 21, 2026

This topic describes how to upgrade Sisense on Linux, either with the sisense.sh installer or with Helm.

Prerequisites

• Access to the Sisense CLI
• An existing Sisense Linux version
• A Minimum Requirements for Sisense in Linux Environments of Kubernetes for the upgraded version of Sisense is installed. You can check your version of Kubernetes with the command:
  

  kubectl version

  When the installer deploys NGINX Gateway Fabric (SSL is enabled, or gateway_port is 80), the cluster must run Kubernetes 1.32 or later. Otherwise, the installer stops with an error before it deploys Sisense.

Skipping Compilation for Partner Plugins

Some partner plugins are delivered in a compiled format and should not be recompiled during a version upgrade. Recompiling these types of plugins during an upgrade may result in a crash due to timeouts.

The skipCompilation flag can be used to prevent the attempted recompilation of these plugins during the upgrade process. This flag is included in the plugin.json file of all certified plugins, and should be set to true to skip compilation for the plugin.

The plugin folders with the plugin.json files are found in the /opt/sisense/storage/plugins/ folder.

Upgrading Sisense in a Linux Environment

Use this procedure if you installed Sisense with the sisense.sh installer.

1. Backup your Sisense assets to ensure that your upgraded Sisense deployment continues to work as before, See Backing up and Restoring Sisense.
2. If you use partner plug-ins, see Skipping Compilation for Partner Plugins, (above).

3. Download the latest version of Sisense.

   wget [sisense-linux-deployment-link]

   Contact Sisense to receive the latest Linux archive file.

4. Extract the tar.gz file:

   tar zxf [sisense-linux-deployment-package-name]

5. Copy your previous configuration file (for example, config.yaml) to the current installation folder.

6. Edit the config.yaml file:

   vim config.yaml

   Note:

   This command is an example and may be different depending on the configuration file you used when installing Sisense.

7. In your configuration file, set the value of the update parameter to true.

8. On an on-premises cluster that the installer created (RKE2), you can also upgrade Kubernetes as part of the upgrade: set update_k8s_version to true. The installer then upgrades RKE2 on all the nodes to the version that it ships with (RKE2 v1.37.0 in Sisense 2026.4.0). Leave update_k8s_version set to false to keep the current Kubernetes version.

   Upgrading a cluster that still runs RKE (RKE1) to RKE2 in place is not supported: with update_k8s_version set to true, the installer detects RKE1 and stops with an error.

9. If necessary, configure any other required parameter values. For a full explanation of each parameter, see Installing Sisense on Linux.

10. Run the installation script with your configuration file.

    ./sisense.sh config.yaml

    Your configuration settings are displayed with a message to confirm that you want to deploy Sisense with these settings.

11. Enter y to confirm that you want to deploy Sisense, or n to abort the deployment. If there are any issues when the deployment script finishes, view the installation log, sisense-installer.log, in the directory from which you ran sisense.sh:

    [installation-dir]/sisense-installer.log

12. Restore your Sisense assets. See Backing up and Restoring Sisense.

Upgrading a Sisense Helm Installation

Use this procedure if you installed Sisense with Helm (see Installing Sisense with Helm on an Existing Cluster (Multinode/Cloud) or Manually Installing Sisense Helm Chart - Single Node).

1. Back up Sisense. See Backing up and Restoring Sisense.

2. Update the Sisense Helm repo and find the new chart version (for example, 2026.4.0):

   Copy

   helm repo update
   helm search repo sisense-fusion/sisense --versions

3. If you use Sisense Internal Monitoring, upgrade it first. See Installing/Updating Sisense Internal Monitoring.

4. Review your values file against the release notes of the new version. Keep the complete values file that you used for the installation: do not use --reuse-values, because new chart versions can change default values.

5. Preview the upgrade against the cluster. The chart reads existing cluster resources while it renders, so use a server-side dry run (Helm 3.13 or later) rather than helm template:

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   # The Sisense namespace and release name (see "helm list -n <namespace>")
   NAMESPACE=sisense
   RELEASE=sisense
   
   # The new chart version
   SISENSE_SEMVER=2026.4.0
   
   helm upgrade ${RELEASE} sisense-fusion/sisense -n ${NAMESPACE} --version ${SISENSE_SEMVER} \
     -f values.yaml --dry-run=server > /tmp/sisense-upgrade-render.yaml

6. Upgrade the release. Pre-upgrade jobs run before the pods are replaced, so allow a longer timeout than the Helm default of 5 minutes:

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   helm upgrade ${RELEASE} sisense-fusion/sisense -n ${NAMESPACE} --version ${SISENSE_SEMVER} \
     -f values.yaml --timeout 30m

7. If you use the Sisense Logging chart, upgrade it after Sisense. See Installing/Updating Sisense Logging Helm Chart.

8. Make sure that all the pods are running:

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   kubectl -n ${NAMESPACE} get pods

Side-by-Side Upgrades with Restoring a Backup with Generic JDBC Connections

When importing a data model, or opening an existing data model, the old connectors pod must be up already, otherwise the JDBC connection will be blank.

For side-by-side upgrades that require a restore of a backup that has generic JDBC connections, do not perform the restore until after you perform the following steps:

1. Install Sisense.

2. Activate Sisense.

3. Scale up the connectors pod.

4. Restart the query pod.

5. Only after the previous steps have been performed, now perform the Sisense restore from a Sisense backup.

Watch this video about Upgrading Sisense: