Data source fundamentals on Grafana Labs

Connect Grafana to your data

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 05:43:38 -0700

Connect Grafana to the data you already have

Your data already lives somewhere: a metrics store, a database, a cloud service, an API. Data sources connect Grafana to those systems so you can query, visualize, and alert on your data without moving it.

What you’ll learn

This journey covers:

What a data source is: a connection that lets you query your data where it already lives
Common data sources and what each is good for
How connecting to data differs from sending it to Grafana Cloud, like with integrations
How to connect a data source with a guided path
What to do next after your data is flowing: query, visualize, and alert

Journey duration

20 minutes

Data sources covered

Prometheus • InfluxDB • Loki • Elasticsearch • CloudWatch • MySQL • PostgreSQL • Infinity • Google Sheets

Prerequisites

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 05:43:38 -0700

For hands-on practice

If you’d like to follow along with the path exercises and connect real data sources, you’ll need:

A Grafana Cloud account (sign up free) or access to a Grafana instance
Access to a data source you want to connect (database, metrics store, etc.)
Organization Admin permissions in Grafana (required to add data sources)

Just exploring? You can complete the journey without hands-on practice. The concepts and decision frameworks are valuable on their own.

About permissions: Adding data sources requires the Organization Admin role. Setting permissions on an individual data source, for example restricting a source to one team, is a Grafana Cloud and Grafana Enterprise capability. If the Permissions tab is missing, it’s usually your role or edition, not a bug.

Recommended prior knowledge

Topic	Why it helps
Basic Grafana navigation	You’ll configure data sources in the UI
Understanding your data	You’ll know which data source type to use
Connection details	You’ll need hostnames, credentials, etc.

What are data sources?

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 05:43:38 -0700

A connection to where your data lives

A data source is a connection to a backend that holds your data, such as a Prometheus server, a Loki instance, a SQL database, or a cloud monitoring service. Every data source:

Comes from a data source plugin, the connector software. Common ones are built in; for others you install the plugin first.
Is the configured instance you add from that plugin, with its own connection details. You install a plugin, but you configure a data source.
Comes with a query editor that formulates queries in the source’s own language
Lets you query, visualize, and alert on your data without moving it

Your data already lives across systems like these. Grafana connects to them as data sources without custom integration code or a separate data pipeline, querying each one through its API instead of collecting your data with an agent. Your data stays where it lives, with no migration.

What connecting gives you

With that connection, you can:

Capability	What it means
Query	Run queries against your data from Grafana, using each source’s query language.
Visualize	Build dashboards and panels from those queries.
Alert	Create alert rules that watch your data and notify you. A single alert rule can query more than one data source, for example a Prometheus error rate alongside an Elasticsearch log query.

You can also combine multiple data sources in a single dashboard, for example Prometheus metrics alongside MySQL application data and CloudWatch stats.

Data sources compared to integrations

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 05:43:38 -0700

Data sources compared to integrations

In Grafana Cloud’s Connections, you’ll see both data sources and integrations, sometimes with similar names. They sound alike, but they work differently. The difference comes down to where your data lives.

	Data source	Integration
Where your data lives	Stays in its original system; Grafana queries it in place	Collected and sent into Grafana Cloud storage
Collection	You set it up and run it	A managed collector is installed for you
Dashboards and alerts	You build most yourself; some data sources include prebuilt dashboards	Prebuilt dashboards and alerts come with it
Migration or new storage	None; your data doesn’t move	Your data is copied into Grafana Cloud
Best when	You already have systems you don’t want to migrate	You want a managed, batteries-included setup

Integrations are one of two ways to send data into Grafana Cloud. The other is sending telemetry directly with Alloy, OpenTelemetry, or SDKs, which is the manual version of the same idea: either way, your data ends up stored in Grafana Cloud.

Key insight:

A data source queries your data where it lives and leaves collection, dashboards, and alerts mostly to you Supported data sources can even back Grafana Cloud features like service level objectives (SLOs).
An integration brings your data into Grafana Cloud and manages collection plus prebuilt dashboards and alerts for you.

When to use which

Reach for a data source when:

You already have monitoring infrastructure you don’t want to migrate.
Data sovereignty requires your data to stay in your own systems.
You want to query and visualize data from tools you already run.

Choose an integration when:

You’re fine sending your data to Grafana Cloud to be stored there.
You want a managed setup with prebuilt dashboards and alerts.