InfluxData is releasing InfluxDB 3.8 for both Core and Enterprise, alongside the 1.6 release of the InfluxDB 3 Explorer UI—with updates focused on operational maturity and making InfluxDB easier to deploy, manage, and run reliably in production.
According to the company, InfluxDB 3 Core remains free and open source under MIT and Apache 2 licenses, optimized for recent data. InfluxDB 3 Enterprise builds on that foundation with long-range querying, clustering, security, and full operational tooling.
InfluxDB 3.8 introduces Linux service management across deb and rpm packages, so InfluxDB installs and runs like a standard Linux service without manual setup.
Packages now register systemd units on modern distributions and provide SysV support for older environments. Services install cleanly, enable automatically, and respond to the same lifecycle commands operators already use. Configurability is centralized in a TOML file and a launcher that translates those settings into the server’s current configuration model, the company said.
Upgrading from Core to Enterprise is straightforward. Both use the same data and plugin locations, so you simply install Enterprise over Core and restart. There is no data migration or juggling directories.
For teams running InfluxDB on Kubernetes, 3.8 introduces an official Helm chart for Enterprise, currently in beta. This makes deployments more predictable, repeatable, and aligned with production best practices, according to InfluxData.
The Helm chart packages recommended deployment patterns into a single chart, so users don’t have to maintain custom manifests or piece together a configuration from scratch. It supports common production needs such as object storage configuration, cluster settings, and environment-specific overrides, and uses standard Helm mechanisms for installs, upgrades, and rollouts.
Version 1.6 of Explorer UI expands Ask AI with Custom Instructions, giving users more control over how the AI behaves and what context it uses when generating responses. Users can teach Ask AI naming conventions, call out which measurements or tags matter most, or specify how you want results formatted. This makes Ask AI more consistent across sessions, users, and shared environments.
This is especially useful when multiple teams work against different datasets, but want Ask AI to stay grounded in their specific workflows.
Other improvements include:
- Explorer’s line protocol experience is smoother and easier to work with, with clearer validation and more helpful feedback.
- The Processing Engine includes refinements to write buffering and query handling for sparse datasets, improving stability under uneven workloads.
- New internal metrics give operators better visibility into ingestion, Processing Engine execution, and storage activity.
InfluxDB 3.8 is available now. Explorer 1.6 is also available with Ask AI Custom Instructions and improvements across both writing and querying.
For more information about this news, visit www.influxdata.com.