---
title: "Configure remote_write with Prometheus Operator | Grafana Cloud documentation"
description: "How to configure Prometheus Operator to scrape and send metrics to Grafana Cloud"
---

> For a curated documentation index, see [llms.txt](/llms.txt). For the complete documentation index, see [llms-full.txt](/llms-full.txt).

# Configure remote\_write with Prometheus Operator

You can configure Prometheus Operator to scrape an endpoint and send the scraped metrics to Grafana Cloud. [Prometheus Operator](https://github.com/prometheus-operator/prometheus-operator) implements the Kubernetes Operator pattern for managing a Prometheus-based Kubernetes monitoring stack. A Kubernetes Operator consists of Kubernetes custom resources and controller code that abstract away the management and implementation details of running a given service on Kubernetes. To learn more about Kubernetes Operators, see [Operator pattern](https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/extend-kubernetes/operator/) from the Kubernetes docs.

The Prometheus Operator provides a set of Kubernetes Custom Resources that simplify Prometheus, Grafana and Alertmanager deployment and configuration. For example, with the `ServiceMonitor` custom resource, you can configure how to monitor groups of Kubernetes services in YAML manifests. The Operator controller then communicates with the Kubernetes API server to monitor service endpoints, and automatically generates the required Prometheus scrape configurations for the configured services. To learn more about Prometheus Operator, refer to the Prometheus Operator [GitHub repository](https://github.com/prometheus-operator/prometheus-operator).

[kube-prometheus](https://github.com/prometheus-operator/kube-prometheus) configures Prometheus Operator with a default Prometheus-Alertmanager-Grafana stack, and sets up preconfigured Alertmanager alerts. It also configures a set of Prometheus scrape targets and sets up node-exporter and kube-state-metrics.

## Before you begin

You must have either Prometheus Operator or kube-prometheus installed and running in your Kubernetes cluster. Prometheus Operator is a sub-component of the kube-prometheus stack.

- To install Prometheus Operator, see the [Prometheus Operator](https://github.com/prometheus-operator/prometheus-operator) GitHub repository.
- To install kube-prometheus, see [kube-prometheus](https://github.com/prometheus-operator/kube-prometheus).

If you used the Helm package manager to install either of these components, see the relevant guide:

- [Configure remote\_write with Helm and Prometheus](/docs/grafana-cloud/monitor-infrastructure/kubernetes-monitoring/configuration/config-other-methods/prometheus/remote-write-helm-prometheus/)
- [Configure remote\_write with Helm and kube-prometheus-stack](/docs/grafana-cloud/monitor-infrastructure/kubernetes-monitoring/configuration/config-other-methods/prometheus/remote-write-helm-operator/)

## Create a Kubernetes Secret to store Grafana Cloud credentials

Create a Kubernetes Secret to store your Grafana Cloud Metrics username and password.

To create your Kubernetes Secret:

1. To find your username, navigate to your stack in the Cloud Portal and click **Details** next to the Prometheus panel.
   
   Your password corresponds to a Cloud Access Policy token that you can generate by clicking on **Generate now** in this same panel. To create a Cloud Access Policy, refer to [Create a Grafana Cloud Access Policy](/docs/grafana-cloud/security-and-account-management/authentication-and-permissions/access-policies/create-access-policies/).
2. Make a note of your Cloud Prometheus username and password.
3. Run the following command to create a Secret, as in this example, `kubepromsecret`:
   
   ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy
   
   ```none
   kubectl create secret generic kubepromsecret \
     --from-literal=username=<your_grafana_cloud_prometheus_username>\
    --from-literal=password='<your_grafana_cloud_access_policy_token>'\
    -n default
   ```
   
   > **Note**: If you deployed your monitoring stack in a namespace other than `default`, change the `-n monitoring` flag to the appropriate namespace in the above command. For more information about this command, see [Managing Secrets using kubectl](https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/configmap-secret/managing-secret-using-kubectl/).
   
   Instead of creating the secret directly as in this example, you can use a manifest file. For more about Kubernetes Secrets, refer to [Secrets](https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/configuration/secret/).

## Modify the Prometheus manifest configuration

1. Locate the manifest file for the Prometheus custom resource running in your cluster.
   
   - If you are using kube-prometheus and deployed its default stack, the manifest file is [`prometheus-prometheus.yaml`](https://github.com/prometheus-operator/kube-prometheus/blob/master/manifests/prometheus-prometheus.yaml) in the `manifests` directory of the kube-prometheus GitHub repo.
   - If you are using Prometheus Operator, first define and deploy one or more Prometheus instances using the Prometheus Custom Resource Definition (CRD) created by Prometheus Operator. You can use the Prometheus manifest from kube-prometheus to help you begin. The installation and configuration of Prometheus in your cluster is beyond the scope of this content.
2. Open the manifest file in an editor. You should see something like the following:
   
   ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy
   
   ```none
   apiVersion: monitoring.coreos.com/v1
   kind: Prometheus
   metadata:
     labels:
       prometheus: k8s
     name: k8s
     namespace: monitoring
   spec:
     alerting:
       alertmanagers:
       - name: alertmanager-main
         namespace: monitoring
         port: web
     image: quay.io/prometheus/prometheus:v2.22.1
     nodeSelector:
       kubernetes.io/os: linux
     podMonitorNamespaceSelector: {}
     podMonitorSelector: {}
     probeNamespaceSelector: {}
     probeSelector: {}
     replicas: 2
     resources:
       requests:
         memory: 400Mi
     ruleSelector:
       matchLabels:
         prometheus: k8s
         role: alert-rules
     securityContext:
       fsGroup: 2000
       runAsNonRoot: true
       runAsUser: 1000
     serviceAccountName: prometheus-k8s
     serviceMonitorNamespaceSelector: {}
     serviceMonitorSelector: {}
     version: v2.22.1
   ```
   
   The manifest file may vary depending on your specific Prometheus deployment.
3. Edit and append the following `remote_write` configuration block after the `version` parameter:
   
   ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy
   
   ```none
     version: v2.22.1
     remoteWrite:
     - url: "<Your Metrics instance remote_write endpoint>"
       basicAuth:
         username:
           name: kubepromsecret
           key: username
         password:
           name: kubepromsecret
           key: password
   ```
   
   Make the following edits:
   
   - Set the `remote_write` URL to Grafana Cloud’s Prometheus metrics endpoint. To find the `/api/prom/push` URL, username, and password for your metrics endpoint, click **Details** in the Prometheus card of the [Cloud Portal](/docs/grafana-cloud/account-management/cloud-portal/).
   - Update the `basicAuth` username and password fields based on the Secret you created in the previous step (named `kubepromsecret` in the example). Enter the `username` and `password` keys for the Secret.
4. Save and close the file after editing it.
5. Make the changes using the following command:
   
   ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy
   
   ```none
   kubectl apply -f prometheus-prometheus.yaml -n monitoring
   ```
   
   Replace `prometheus-prometheus.yaml` with the appropriate filename and `monitoring` with the namespace into which the Prometheus stack has been installed.
   
   You should see the following output:
   
   ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy
   
   ```none
   prometheus.monitoring.coreos.com/k8s configured
   ```

## Verify your updates

Verify that your changes have propagated to your running Prometheus instances:

1. Use `port-forward` by running this command:
   
   ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy
   
   ```none
   kubectl --namespace monitoring port-forward svc/prometheus-k8s 9090
   ```
   
   Replace `namespace` with the appropriate namespace, and `prometheus-k8s` with the Prometheus service name.
2. Navigate to `http://localhost:9090` in your browser, and then **Status** and **Configuration**.
3. Verify that the `remote_write` block you appended above has propagated to your running Prometheus instances.
4. Log in to your Grafana instance to begin querying your cluster data.
5. Navigate to [Kubernetes Monitoring](/docs/grafana-cloud/monitor-infrastructure/kubernetes-monitoring/navigate-k8s-monitoring/#navigate-to-kubernetes-monitoring), and click **Configuration** on the main menu.
6. Click the **Metrics status** tab to view the data status. Your data begins populating in the view as the system components begin scraping and sending data to Grafana Cloud.
   
   [**Metrics status** tab with status indicators for one Cluster](/media/docs/grafana-cloud/k8s/metrics-status-9-18.png)