Slide 2 of 4

Prerequisites

For hands-on practice

If you’d like to follow along with the learning path exercises and connect real data sources, you’ll need:

  • A Grafana Cloud account (sign up free) or access to a Grafana instance
  • Access to a data source you want to connect (database, metrics store, etc.)
  • Organization Admin permissions in Grafana (required to add data sources)

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

About permissions: Adding data sources requires the Organization Admin role. Setting permissions on an individual data source, for example restricting a source to one team, is a Grafana Cloud and Grafana Enterprise capability. If the Permissions tab is missing, it’s usually your role or edition, not a bug.

TopicWhy it helps
Basic Grafana navigationYou’ll configure data sources in the UI
Understanding your dataYou’ll know which data source type to use
Connection detailsYou’ll need hostnames, credentials, etc.

Script

Let’s talk about what you’ll need for this journey.

If you want to follow along with the hands-on learning path exercises, you’ll need a few things. First, a Grafana Cloud account or access to a Grafana instance. You can sign up for free at https://grafana.com/signup/cloud/connect-account.

Second, access to at least one data source you want to connect. This could be a Prometheus server, a database, a cloud provider, or even just a CSV file.

And finally, organization Admin permissions in your Grafana instance to add data sources. Only admins can add new data sources.

But if you’re just exploring concepts and not ready for hands-on practice, that’s completely fine. The concepts and decision frameworks are valuable on their own, and you can return to the hands-on sections whenever you’re ready.

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