---
title: "Where this course fits | Grafana Labs"
description: "How external collectors compare to other approaches"
---

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

## Comparing Level 1 approaches

**Level 1 courses for getting data into Grafana Cloud**

| Approach                       | Course                                                                               | Best for                                   | What you get                               |
|--------------------------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|--------------------------------------------|--------------------------------------------|
| **Integrations** (recommended) | [Introduction to integrations](/docs/learning-hub/intro-to-integrations/)            | Common technologies, starting fresh        | Pre-built dashboards, alerts, Alloy config |
| **External collectors**        | **This course**                                                                      | Already running Prometheus, InfluxDB, etc. | Keep your setup, Grafana Cloud storage     |
| **Data sources**               | [Introduction to data sources](/docs/learning-hub/intro-to-data-sources/)            | Data must stay in place                    | Query without storing                      |
| **Cloud providers**            | [Introduction to Cloud Provider Observability](/docs/learning-hub/intro-to-cp-olly/) | AWS, Azure, GCP resources                  | Native cloud metrics and logs              |

> **Not sure?** If you’re starting fresh or want the easiest path, start with [Integrations](/docs/learning-hub/intro-to-integrations/). Come back here if you have existing collectors you want to keep.