---
title: "Prerequisites | Grafana Labs"
description: "What you need to complete the hands-on sections"
---

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

## For hands-on practice

If you’d like to follow along with the learning path exercises, you’ll need:

- A Grafana Cloud account ([sign up free](/signup/cloud/connect-account))
- A running database you want to monitor
- Access to install Grafana Alloy
- Database credentials with appropriate monitoring permissions

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

## Requirements vary by approach

| Approach                   | What you’ll need                                                                                |
|----------------------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| **Database Observability** | Grafana Alloy 1.14.0+, MySQL 8.0+ or PostgreSQL 14+, a monitoring user with specific privileges |
| **Integrations**           | Grafana Alloy, network access to your database, monitoring credentials                          |

## Recommended prior knowledge

| Topic                           | Why it helps                                             |
|---------------------------------|----------------------------------------------------------|
| Basic Grafana navigation        | You’ll use dashboards and Explore                        |
| Terminal or command line basics | Alloy installation uses the CLI                          |
| Basic database administration   | You’ll create monitoring users and configure permissions |