---
title: "Explore external data source connections | Grafana Labs"
description: "Learn the options available to connect externally hosted data sources to Grafana Cloud so you can visualize and query data without moving it."
---

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

# Explore external data source connections

Grafana’s core philosophy is “bring your own data”. This means you don’t have to move data into a proprietary store. Instead, it queries data where it already lives.

You can connect Grafana Cloud to externally hosted data sources. Then you can visualize and query data that stays in its original location.

1. If you have not signed in to your Grafana Cloud environment, do so now.
2. Open the main menu on the left, and click **Connections**.
3. Click the **Add new connection** tile.
4. Type **MySQL** in the search box to filter the results to the MySQL data source tile.
5. Click the **MySQL** tile under the **Data source** heading.
6. This option allows you to connect to an external MySQL database and query it in place without migrating data.
7. Click **Add new data source**.
8. You can use these settings to configure the connection to your external MySQL server. After that, you can create dashboards and queries for your data.
9. Notice the tabs at the top lead to additional settings and information.

In the next milestone, you explore the core platform components included in every Grafana Cloud stack, from visualization and alerting to incident response and performance testing.

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### More to explore (optional)

At this point in your path, you can explore the following topics:

- [Connect or send data to Grafana Cloud](/docs/grafana-cloud/get-started/connect-send/)
- [Work with demo data in Grafana Cloud](/docs/grafana-cloud/get-started/connect-send/explore-demo-data/)