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Section 1 · Send data fundamentals

Confirm external collectors fit your situation, or find another way to get data into Grafana Cloud

Estimated time: 1 min

Is this journey right for you?

This journey covers sending metrics and logs from collectors you already run. It doesn’t cover traces.

Good fit if:

You already run Prometheus, InfluxDB, Graphite, or Telegraf
Your applications already emit OpenTelemetry
You want long-term storage you don’t run yourself
You don’t want to change your existing collection setup
You’re comfortable building your own dashboards

Not a fit? Other ways to get data into Grafana Cloud

If your situation doesn’t match the checklist, one of these approaches is likely a better starting point. Each has its own journey.

Approach	Best for	Learn more
Grafana Alloy	Starting fresh, collecting with Grafana’s recommended collector	Grafana Alloy
Integrations	Common technologies, with prebuilt dashboards and alerts	Introduction to integrations
Data sources	Data that must stay in place, queried without storing	Introduction to data sources
Cloud providers	AWS, Azure, or GCP resources	Introduction to Cloud Provider Observability

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Audio transcript

Before investing time in this journey, let’s make sure sending from external collectors is the right approach for your situation.

This journey covers sending metrics and logs from collectors you already run. It doesn’t cover traces. Traces are about request flow through your services, a different skill set that we’ll cover in a separate journey.

Sending from external collectors works well when the collection problem is already solved and you just need storage. Maybe you’re running Prometheus and want long-term storage without managing it yourself. Maybe you have Telegraf collecting metrics, or your applications already emit OpenTelemetry. In each case, you just need somewhere to send the data. Take a look at the good-fit checklist here.

If that’s not you, here are the other ways to get data into Grafana Cloud. If you’re starting fresh, Grafana’s recommended approach is to collect with Grafana Alloy. For common technologies, an integration bundles Alloy with prebuilt dashboards and alerts. If your data needs to stay where it is, data sources let Grafana query it directly without storing a copy. And for AWS, Azure, or GCP, Cloud Provider Observability pulls native metrics without running collectors in your cloud accounts. Each links to its own journey, so start with whichever matches your situation.