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Welcome to the Grafana learning path for connecting and verifying a ClickHouse data source in Grafana Cloud.

Estimated time: 14 min

Connect to a ClickHouse data source in Grafana Cloud

Welcome to the Grafana learning path for connecting a ClickHouse data source.

ClickHouse is a fast, open source, column-oriented database built for online analytical processing (OLAP). It excels at storing and querying huge volumes of logs, traces, and events, which makes it a popular backend for observability and analytics at scale. The ClickHouse data source lets you query and visualize that data directly in Grafana, using either a visual query builder or raw SQL.

This journey walks you through connecting Grafana Cloud to your ClickHouse server so you can query, visualize, and build dashboards from your ClickHouse data.

Here’s what to expect

When you complete this journey, you’ll be able to:

  • Understand why ClickHouse pairs well with Grafana for logs, traces, and analytics
  • Create a read-only ClickHouse user that Grafana can use safely
  • Add the ClickHouse data source plugin in Grafana Cloud
  • Configure the connection details, protocol, and credentials for your ClickHouse server
  • Save and test the connection, and recognize the most common connection errors
  • Verify that your ClickHouse data returns by running a query in Explore

Before you begin

Before you connect to a ClickHouse data source, ensure you have:

  • A running ClickHouse server that Grafana Cloud can reach on its query port (Native: 9000, or 9440 with TLS; HTTP: 8123, or 8443 with TLS).
  • A read-only ClickHouse user, or permission to create one (you’ll set this up in this journey).
  • The connection details for your server: host, port, username, and password.
  • Organization administrator access in Grafana, which is required to add a data source.
  • If your ClickHouse server sits behind a firewall, network access from Grafana Cloud (for example, an allowlist entry or a private data source connection).

Troubleshooting

If you get stuck, help is close at hand. Where it’s useful, this journey links to the relevant ClickHouse data source troubleshooting topics.

More to explore

Where it makes sense, we’ll point you to related capabilities such as the prebuilt OpenTelemetry dashboards and Drilldown apps so you can keep going after you’re connected.

Are you ready?
Let's go!