docs/sources/datasources/google-cloud-monitoring/_index.md
Google Cloud Monitoring (formerly Stackdriver) is Google Cloud Platform's native monitoring and observability service that collects metrics, events, and metadata from GCP resources, hosted uptime probes, and application instrumentation. The Google Cloud Monitoring data source in Grafana allows you to query and visualize this data alongside metrics from other systems, creating unified dashboards for comprehensive infrastructure and application monitoring.
Grafana includes built-in support for Google Cloud Monitoring, so you don't need to install a plugin.
The following documents will help you get started with the Google Cloud Monitoring data source:
The Google Cloud Monitoring data source supports the following query types:
| Query type | Description |
|---|---|
| Metrics | Query time series data from GCP resources using the Monitoring Query Language (MQL) or the visual builder. |
| Service Level Objectives (SLOs) | Query SLO data defined in Google Cloud Monitoring to track service reliability and error budgets. |
After you configure the Google Cloud Monitoring data source, you can:
The Google Cloud Monitoring data source includes pre-configured dashboards for popular GCP services. These curated dashboards are based on similar dashboards in the GCP dashboard samples repository.
{{< figure src="/static/img/docs/google-cloud-monitoring/curated-dashboards-7-4.png" class="docs-image--no-shadow" max-width="650px" caption="Curated dashboards for Google Cloud Monitoring" >}}
To import a pre-configured dashboard:
The dashboards include a template variable populated with the projects accessible by the configured service account each time you load the dashboard. After Grafana loads the dashboard, you can select a project from the dropdown list.
To customize an imported dashboard, save it under a different name. Otherwise, Grafana upgrades can overwrite your customizations with the new version.