---
title: "Set up Synthetic Monitoring in a local Grafana instance | Grafana Cloud documentation"
description: "How to enable and initialize Synthetic Monitoring in your local Grafana instance to start creating checks"
---

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

# Set up Synthetic Monitoring in a local Grafana instance

> Note
> 
> If you connect an on-premise open-source (OSS) Grafana instance to your Grafana Cloud services, Grafana’s support team can help with issues on the Grafana Cloud side but will be unable to assist in troubleshooting issues that arise within your on-premise Grafana installation. Support for doing this is limited to the documentation and the [community forums](https://community.grafana.com/). Refer to [Account types and support available for Grafana Cloud users](/docs/grafana-cloud/account-management/support/#account-types-and-support-available-for-grafana-cloud-users) for more information.

Use the [grafana-cli](/docs/grafana/latest/cli/) tool to install Synthetic Monitoring from the command-line:

Bash ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy

```bash
grafana-cli plugins install grafana-synthetic-monitoring-app
```

The CLI installs the plugin in your Grafana plugins directory. The default location is `/var/lib/grafana/plugins`.

> Note
> 
> Synthetic Monitoring requires a Grafana Cloud account for logs and metrics storage, as Synthetic Monitoring doesn’t support local logs and metrics storage. The [Grafana Cloud Free Tier](/products/cloud/) is sufficient for a basic Synthetic Monitoring setup.

To enable and initialize Synthetic Monitoring in your local Grafana instance:

1. Setup provisioning files as described [in GitHub](https://github.com/grafana/synthetic-monitoring-app/#configuration).
2. In Grafana, navigate to **Administration > Plugins**.
3. Select **Synthetic Monitoring** from the list.
4. Click **Install**.
5. Click **Enable** to start the initialization process.
6. Navigate to **Testing & synthetics > Synthetics**.
7. Click **Initialize the Plugin**.

## Next steps

Refer to [Create your first check](/docs/grafana-cloud/testing/synthetic-monitoring/get-started/create-your-first-check/) for next steps.