---
title: "Set up GEM | Grafana Enterprise Metrics documentation"
description: "Set up Grafana Enterprise Metrics Grafana Enterprise Metrics is available as a pre-compiled binary, a Docker image, as well as via common OS-specific packaging. For a list of available download options, refer to Download GEM."
---

# Set up Grafana Enterprise Metrics

Grafana Enterprise Metrics is available as a pre-compiled binary, a Docker image, as well as via common OS-specific packaging. For a list of available download options, refer to [Download GEM](/docs/enterprise-metrics/latest/get-started/download-gem/).

> **Note:** You can use [Grafana Cloud](/products/cloud/features/#cloud-metrics) to avoid installing, maintaining, and scaling your own instance of GEM. The free forever plan includes 50GB of free metrics. [Create an account to get started](/auth/sign-up/create-user?pg=docs-enterprise-metrics&plcmt=in-text).

## Get a GEM license

A valid Grafana Enterprise Metrics license token is required to run GEM’s many added features. Without a valid license token, not all of GEM’s added features will run. However, GEM will still run with all of the functionality of an open-source Grafana Mimir binary.

If you already have a license for GEM:

1. From [https://grafana.com](/), select **Login**.
2. From the left-hand menu, select **Licenses** to download the license token.

If you do not have a license token to run GEM, [contact a Grafana Labs representative](/contact?about=grafana-metrics-enterprise).

### Choose a name for your GEM cluster

GEM licenses are issued on a per-cluster basis. Each cluster of GEM that you plan to deploy requires a unique license. When we issue a GEM license, we must have a unique cluster name with which to associate the license.

A cluster name must meet the following criteria:

- is 3 to 63 characters long
- contains lowercase letters, numbers, underscores (\_), or hyphens (-)
- begins with a letter or number
- ends with a letter or number

## Deploy your GEM cluster

> **Note:** GEM includes a system that optionally and anonymously reports non-sensitive, non-personally identifiable information about the running GEM cluster to a remote statistics server. This feature is **turned on by default**. If possible, we kindly ask that you keep the usage reporting feature enabled to help us understand more about how operators run GEM. To opt out, refer to [Disable the anonymous usage statistics reporting](/docs/mimir/v2.17.x/configure/about-anonymous-usage-statistics-reporting/#disable-the-anonymous-usage-statistics-reporting).

After you have obtained a Grafana GEM license with an associated cluster name, refer to [Deploy Mimir with Helm](/docs/enterprise-metrics/v2.17.x/set-up/helm-chart/).

## Configure limits for production use

To set up your cluster with limits for production use after you have deployed a cluster, see the [GEM limits recommendations](/docs/enterprise-metrics/latest/configure/config-gem/limits/).

## Secure GEM

To secure GEM data and communication paths, refer to [Secure Grafana Enterprise Metrics](/docs/enterprise-metrics/latest/manage/secure/secure-gem/).