Send data fundamentals on Grafana Labs

Storage without changing how you collect

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 11:08:53 -0500

Storage without changing how you collect

You already collect metrics and logs. Grafana Cloud can store that data from the collectors you already run, including Prometheus, InfluxDB, Graphite, and OpenTelemetry.

What you’ll learn

Here’s what this journey covers:

When this approach fits, and when the send-metrics docs point you at a different connection method
Which method matches the data you already have, for metrics and for logs
How each method sends data, including where Graphite metrics are stored
What you need before you change a collector’s destination

Journey duration

15 minutes

Is this journey right for you?

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 11:08:53 -0500

Is this journey right for you?

This journey covers sending metrics and logs from collectors you already run. The Grafana Cloud OTLP endpoint (OTLP is short for OpenTelemetry Protocol) also accepts traces.

The send metrics docs describe three ways to connect data. This journey is the second one: send from an existing observability deployment.

A good fit when:

You already collect with Prometheus, InfluxDB, Graphite, OpenTelemetry, or a similar setup, and you want Grafana Cloud to store that data.
You want to keep managing that collection yourself.
You want to send only some of your metrics, such as a proof of concept or one team’s metrics.
You want to keep a copy of the same metrics in Grafana Cloud and in the system you already run.

Other ways to get data into Grafana Cloud

Approach	When the docs suggest it	Learn more
Integrations	You want to get started quickly, or you want prebuilt dashboards and alerts. An integration is a package that bundles Grafana Alloy (Grafana’s distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector), dashboards, and alerts. Some integrations do not install Alloy on the host you monitor	Introduction to integrations
Data sources	You want to query data where it is already stored, without storing a copy in Grafana Cloud	Introduction to data sources

For AWS, Azure, and GCP, see Introduction to Cloud Provider Observability.

Ways to send metrics and logs

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 11:08:53 -0500

Ways to send metrics and logs

The method depends on whether you are sending metrics or logs, and on the format you already have. Prometheus, InfluxDB, and OpenTelemetry metrics are stored in Grafana Cloud Metrics. Graphite metrics are stored in the Graphite backend in your stack, not in Grafana Cloud Metrics.

Metrics

Prometheus: Prometheus remote_write pushes scraped samples to Grafana Cloud Metrics.
InfluxDB: the influxdb_exporter exposes metrics for Prometheus to scrape and remote-write, or Telegraf pushes them. Telegraf is a client that sends Influx line protocol, the text format InfluxDB uses for metrics.
Graphite: carbon-relay-ng accepts plain-text carbon metrics and forwards them to Grafana Cloud Graphite. You can also send to the hosted Graphite HTTP API. Both land in Grafana Cloud Graphite.
OpenTelemetry: the Grafana Cloud OTLP endpoint accepts OTLP metrics and routes them into Grafana Cloud Metrics.

Grafana Cloud also documents sending Datadog metrics. This journey does not walk through that method.

Logs

OpenTelemetry: the same OTLP endpoint accepts OTLP logs and routes them into Grafana Cloud Logs.
Push API: Grafana Cloud Logs is powered by Loki. Log entries are ingested with POST /loki/api/v1/push.

Prerequisites

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 11:08:53 -0500

Prerequisites

You can read this journey without changing anything. To follow a method on your own stack, you need:

A Grafana Cloud account (sign up)
A metrics or logs collector you already run
Access to change the destination that collector sends to

Prometheus, InfluxDB, Telegraf, Graphite, and OTLP each have docs that show where to copy the endpoint URL and credentials. Those pages point at the Cloud Portal, the Grafana Cloud page that lists a stack’s URLs and credentials. The Loki push API reference does not show that portal path.