Slide 12 of 13

Connecting your data sources

Where does your data live?

LocationSolution
Public internetDirect connection
Private VPC/networkPrivate Data Source Connect (PDC)
On-premisesPDC or VPN

PDC lets you query private data sources without opening inbound firewall rules. Available for Grafana Cloud only.

How PDC works

PDC Architecture: Grafana Cloud connects through the PDC Agent to data sources in your private network

PDC is best for:

  • Databases in private VPCs
  • On-prem data sources
  • Strict network security requirements

Supported data sources: PDC supports 50+ data source types including Prometheus, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Loki, and Elasticsearch. See the full list and known limitations.

Learning path

Deploy private data source connect step by step.

Private data source connect

Script

Before you configure a data source, you need to answer one key question: where does your data live? If your data source is publicly accessible on the internet, you can connect directly. Just enter the URL and credentials in Grafana, and you’re done.

But what if your data source is behind a firewall? Maybe it’s a database in a private VPC, or a Prometheus server that’s not publicly accessible. You could open firewall rules, but that creates security risks.

This is where private data source connect, or PDC, comes in. PDC is not a data source, it’s a connectivity solution. It’s an agent you run inside your private network that creates an outbound connection to Grafana Cloud. No inbound ports needed. Grafana Cloud sends queries through that connection, the agent forwards them to your data source, and returns the results. Your data source never needs to be publicly exposed.

Important notes: PDC is a Grafana Cloud feature only. It’s not available in self-managed Grafana. And it supports many popular data sources like Prometheus, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Loki, and Elasticsearch, but not all data source types. Check the documentation for the full list.

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