Documentationbreadcrumb arrow Grafana Cloudbreadcrumb arrow Instrument and send databreadcrumb arrow Metricsbreadcrumb arrow Send metrics without an integration
Grafana Cloud

Send metrics to Grafana Cloud without an integration

If you want to send your Prometheus metrics to Grafana Cloud, but there isn’t an integration available:

  1. Either use an existing Prometheus exporter or write one of your own.

    1. To find and install an exporter, look on GitHub. It has many open source Prometheus exporters available. For a list of Prometheus exporters, see Third-party exporters in the Prometheus documentation. This list is not complete, but you can find additional exporters on other sites.

    2. If there is no existing exporter, you can write your own. For more information, see Writing exporters in the Prometheus documentation.

  2. Deploy it to Grafana Alloy to scrape your local machine or service.

Note

You may also be able to use the Metrics Endpoint integration to create scheduled scrape jobs to collect metrics from any Prometheus-compatible URL that is publicly accessible.

Send metrics with Grafana Alloy

Complete the following steps to install and configure Grafana Alloy.

  1. In your Grafana Cloud stack, click Connections on the main navigation to open the Add new connection page.

  2. After the search field, click Custom data.

  3. Click Hosted Prometheus metrics, and make sure you are in the Configuration details tab.

  4. In the section Choose a method for forwarding metrics, select:

    • Choose a method for forwarding metrics: Via Grafana Alloy

      Select this method if you do not already have a local Prometheus instance running.

    • Show instructions for: Standard

  5. Install Grafana Alloy by clicking Run Grafana Alloy.

    • Select platform: Select the operating system of the machine or service, and the architecture.

    • Create or use an existing API token and set an expiration date.

    • Determine whether to enable remote configuration.

  6. Paste and run the command presented to restart Grafana Alloy. After installation, the configuration is stored in /etc/alloy/config.alloy.