Get started with monitoring using an integration

Install an integration to connect your data and start monitoring with Grafana in just a few steps. This enables you to begin viewing metrics and logs for your operating system, server, or service quickly. This section walks through installing and configuring an operating system integration and viewing the system metrics on a prebuilt dashboard.

The installation steps Grafana Cloud provides are tailored to the integration. This procedure shows a Linux server integration, but you can install the MacOS or Windows integrations similarly. The integration uses Grafana Agent to collect metrics for the operating system running on a node, including CPU usage, load average, memory usage, and disk and networking I/O. The Agent can also scrape logs using promtail.

Before you begin

Ensure you have the following:

A Grafana Cloud account. To create an account, see Grafana Cloud and click Start for free.
A machine running Linux (or the OS of the integration you’re installing).
Command line (terminal) access to the machine.

Install the integration

In your Grafana Cloud stack, click Connections.
Search for the name of the operating system, server, or service to be monitored in the list of integrations or select Infrastructure to filter the list.
Click the tile for your integration.
For the Linux integration, select your operating system and architecture.
Enter the hostname of the Linux node and review the prerequisites for the integration.
Click Install integration below the prerequisites.

If you decide later to stop using the integration, you can remove the installed integration.

Install Grafana Agent

After you install the integration, Grafana Cloud displays instructions for installing Grafana Agent. Follow the displayed instructions, entering the commands in a terminal window.

Copy the command to install and run Grafana Agent and run it in a terminal window on your Linux node.
Click Test integration to ensure the agent is able to collect data.
If the test is successful, the Test integration button becomes View Dashboards.

See Uninstall Grafana Agent if you want to stop using Agent.

View a preconfigured dashboard

Once Grafana Agent starts collecting data, you can view the data on a preconfigured dashboard.

In your Grafana stack, click Dashboards.
On the Dashboards page, locate and select a preconfigured dashboard. The Linux server dashboard is called Nodes and is found in the Linux Node folder. Click it to open the dashboard.
The dashboard is initially empty until the first scrape, which depends on the scrape interval—the amount of time between each scrape of the endpoint. Grafana Cloud provides a default scrape interval for each integration that displays on the configuration page. You can refine your Agent settings, including the scrape interval.
After the agent runs for a while, more data displays:
To view the dashboard at a later time, click Dashboards and search or browse to locate the integration.
Click the integration, for this example, Integration - Linux Node to display recent data.