---
title: "Prerequisites | Grafana Labs"
description: "What you need before starting this journey"
---

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

## For any hands-on practice

To follow along with the learning path exercises, you need:

- A Grafana Cloud account ([sign up free](/signup/cloud/connect-account))
- 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](/docs/grafana-cloud/monitor-infrastructure/monitor-cloud-provider/rbac/) 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 `Dashboards:Writer` and `Folders:Writer` fixed roles to install dashboards and alerts

## 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)

## Recommended prior knowledge

| Topic                         | Why it helps                               |
|-------------------------------|--------------------------------------------|
| Basic Grafana navigation      | You’ll explore dashboards and data sources |
| Your cloud provider’s console | You’ll configure IAM and collection jobs   |

**Just exploring?** You can complete the journey without hands-on practice. The concepts are valuable on their own.