Connect to an Elasticsearch data source in Grafana Cloud

Welcome to the Grafana learning path that shows you how to connect Grafana Cloud to an existing Elasticsearch instance and query your logs and metrics.

Elasticsearch is a search and analytics engine widely used for log aggregation, application search, and infrastructure monitoring. The built-in Elasticsearch data source lets you query and visualize logs or metrics stored in Elasticsearch, and annotate graphs with log events — no data migration required.

This path walks through adding and configuring the Elasticsearch data source, authenticating with your Elasticsearch instance, testing the connection, and verifying that data flows correctly into Grafana Explore.

Here’s what to expect

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

• Understand when querying Elasticsearch directly is the right choice
• Verify that your Elasticsearch instance is running and gather the connection details Grafana needs
• Add the Elasticsearch data source in Grafana Cloud
• Configure the URL, authentication, index name, and time field
• Test the connection to verify Grafana can reach your Elasticsearch instance
• Query and explore Elasticsearch data in Grafana Explore

Before you begin

Before you connect to an Elasticsearch data source, ensure you have:

• A Grafana Cloud account. To create an account, refer to Grafana Cloud.
• Grafana organization administrator permissions. Only users with the administrator role can add data sources.
• An Elasticsearch instance that is running and accessible (v7.17 or later, v8.x, v9.x, or Elastic Cloud Serverless).
• Your Elasticsearch server URL, including the port (default: 9200).
• Authentication credentials with read access — a username and password, an API key, or none if Elasticsearch security is disabled.
• Network access from Grafana Cloud to your Elasticsearch instance (directly or via Private data source connect).

Troubleshooting

If you get stuck, we’ve got your back! Where appropriate, troubleshooting information is just a click away.

More to explore

We understand you might want to explore other capabilities not strictly on this path. We’ll provide you opportunities where it makes sense.