Integration fundamentals on Grafana Labs

Monitoring that's ready to go

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 07:50:41 -0500

Monitoring that’s ready to go

You want to monitor your systems, but building dashboards and alerts from scratch takes time. An integration deploys the Grafana Alloy collector to bring your data into Grafana Cloud. Then you can use prebuilt dashboards and alerts, configured in minutes.

What you’ll learn

Here’s what this journey covers:

What integrations are and how they differ from data sources
Why integrations save setup time with prebuilt, maintained monitoring
How to set up an integration using its path or reference docs
How to use the prebuilt dashboards and alert rules

Journey duration

~20 minutes

Integrations covered

This journey focuses on some of the integrations available:

Linux • Windows • MySQL • PostgreSQL • MongoDB • Redis • Memcached • Apache Cassandra • Oracle Database • HAProxy • IIS • Kafka • SNMP • Istio

What's an integration?

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 07:50:41 -0500

What’s an integration?

An integration is prepackaged monitoring for a specific technology, such as a Linux host, MySQL database, or Kafka cluster. It deploys the Grafana Alloy collector to bring your data into Grafana Cloud, ready to use with prebuilt dashboards and alerts.

Why use an integration?

Fast setup: Connect a technology in minutes.
Maintained defaults: Grafana Labs maintains the default dashboards and alert rules.
Broad coverage: Choose from a large library of prebuilt integrations across hosts, databases, web and proxy, messaging, and network systems.

What’s included in an integration?

Every integration includes three things:

Grafana Alloy configuration: Preconfigured collection settings and a curated set of default metrics for your technology. Some integrations also need a client library, an exporter, or another prerequisite listed on that integration’s reference page.
Prebuilt dashboards: Tailored dashboards for that technology. You do not have to build them.
Alert rules: Default alert rules for common conditions. Each integration’s reference page lists the rules and what they check.

Integrations compared to data sources

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 07:50:41 -0500

Integrations compared to data sources

The main difference between an integration and a data source is where your data lives:

Integration: Data is collected and stored in Grafana Cloud. You get prebuilt dashboards and alerts built for that technology, ready to use.
Data source connection: Your data stays where it already lives, and you query and visualize it through Grafana Cloud. You generally build your own dashboards and alert rules. You can still alert on a data source. Some services offer both an integration and a data source.

When to use each

Use a data source connection when:

You want to visualize data where it already lives.
Cost or retention limits keep data out of Grafana Cloud.
Compliance requires data to stay in its current location.

Use an integration when:

You want to get started quickly.
You want prebuilt dashboards and alerts.
You want your data stored and managed in Grafana Cloud.

Prerequisites for deploying an integration

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 07:50:41 -0500

Prerequisites for deploying an integration

If you’d like to follow along with the path exercises and deploy integrations on real systems, you’ll need:

A Grafana Cloud account (sign up free)
A system to monitor (Linux, Windows, database, etc.)
Permissions to install Grafana Alloy on your target system

Just exploring? You can read the journey without installing anything.

Recommended prior knowledge

These skills aren’t required, but they make the journey smoother:

Topic	Why it helps
Basic Grafana navigation	You’ll use prebuilt dashboards
Terminal/command line basics	Collector installation uses CLI

Resources

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 07:50:41 -0500

Resources

These pages cover what a Grafana Cloud integration is and how it differs from a data source.

Documentation

Get started with monitoring using an integration

Community

Connect with other Grafana users: