Introduction to Grafana Alloy
Welcome to the Grafana learning path that introduces Grafana Alloy for beginners.
Grafana Alloy is an open source telemetry collector that helps you gather and send observability data. It’s an OpenTelemetry Collector distribution with built-in Prometheus pipelines and native support for Loki, Pyroscope, and other observability backends.
Instead of running separate collectors for metrics, logs, traces, and profiles, you configure one tool that handles all of your telemetry needs and can send data to Grafana Cloud, a self-managed Grafana stack, or other compatible backends.
This path is a guided orientation, not a full install-and-configure workshop. By the end, you’ll know what Alloy is, how pipelines work, where Alloy shows up in Grafana Cloud, and which hands-on paths to take next.
Here’s what to expect
When you complete this path, you’ll be able to:
- Explain what Grafana Alloy is and when it makes sense to use it
- Describe how Alloy collects, transforms, and sends telemetry
- Recognize Alloy components and how they form a collect → process → export pipeline
- Find Alloy-related options in Grafana Cloud Connections
- Explain how Fleet Management relates to Alloy at scale
- Choose a practical next learning path for hands-on practice
Before you begin
Before you start, ensure that you have:
- A Grafana Cloud account. To create an account, refer to Grafana Cloud.
- Basic familiarity with Grafana navigation in the Cloud UI.
You don’t need Alloy installed on a host to complete this path.
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.