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Section 1 · Cloud provider observability fundamentals

What you need before starting this journey

Estimated time: 1 min

Prerequisites

To follow along with the path exercises, you need:

  • A Grafana Cloud account (sign up free)
  • Access to at least one cloud provider (AWS, Azure, or GCP), with running resources to monitor such as EC2 instances, Azure VMs, or GCE machines

The permissions you need depend on which path you take.

Requirements for Cloud Provider Observability

  • An Admin or per-provider Writer role in Grafana Cloud to configure Cloud Provider Observability
  • Cloud provider permissions to create IAM roles or service accounts for data collection
  • Without a Grafana Cloud basic role, the Datasources:Reader fixed role to see dashboard data
  • With no basic role or only the Viewer basic role, the Alerting:Rules Writer, Alerting:Set provisioning status, and Folders:Writer fixed roles to install alerts and access folders

Note

Cloud Provider Observability doesn’t support AWS PrivateLink or Azure Private Link.

Requirements for using a data source

  • Permission to add a data source in Grafana
  • Read-only credentials for your cloud provider (no Cloud Provider Observability write access or access policy tokens needed)
TopicWhy it helps
Basic Grafana navigationYou’ll explore dashboards and data sources
Your cloud provider’s consoleYou’ll configure IAM and collection jobs

You can also complete the journey without hands-on practice. The concepts stand on their own.