---
title: "Key concepts | Grafana Labs"
description: "Cloud provider observability concepts and terminology."
---

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

## Essential terminology

| Concept                | Description                                | Examples                                 |
|------------------------|--------------------------------------------|------------------------------------------|
| **Metrics**            | Numerical measurements from cloud services | CPU usage, request counts, costs         |
| **Logs**               | Event records from cloud services and apps | Errors, audit trails, access logs        |
| **Collection Methods** | How data moves from cloud to Grafana       | Scrape jobs, streams, agents             |
| **Data Storage**       | Where your observability data lives        | Grafana Cloud, CloudWatch, Azure Monitor |

> **Collection method + storage decision = your observability architecture.**