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Course overview

Connect your existing collectors

Already have a collector running? Send your data to Grafana Cloud.

What you’ll learn

  • When to use external collectors: Instead of Grafana Alloy or integrations
  • Metrics ingestion methods: Prometheus remote write, InfluxDB, Graphite, OpenTelemetry
  • Logs ingestion methods: OTLP and HTTP API
  • Which method fits your setup: Decision framework based on your existing tools

Course duration

~15 minutes

Methods covered

Prometheus remote write • InfluxDB • Graphite • OpenTelemetry • OTLP • HTTP API

Note: Grafana recommends using Grafana Alloy or integrations for collection. This course is for users who need to connect existing, external collectors.

Script

Already running Prometheus, InfluxDB, or Graphite? This course is for you.

If you have telemetry collection in place and want Grafana Cloud to store that data, you’re in the right place. You’re not looking for Grafana to collect data for you…you just need somewhere to send it.

A quick note before we dive in: Grafana’s recommended approach is to use Grafana Alloy or integrations for collection. Those approaches give you pre-built dashboards, alerts, and a fully supported pipeline. But if you have reasons to keep your existing collectors…organizational constraints, existing investment, specific requirements…this course shows you how to connect them to Grafana Cloud.

By the end, you’ll understand all the methods for sending metrics and logs from external collectors, and you’ll know exactly which one fits your setup.

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