Overview - Cloud Monitor - Alibaba Cloud Documentation Center

You can use enterprise dashboards to integrate Hybrid Cloud Monitoring with Grafana. You can also use an enterprise dashboard to create self-managed Grafana instances. You can select an integration mode based on your business scenarios, metric sources, and metric dimensions.

The following table describes the differences between the integration modes of Cloud Monitor and Grafana.

Category	Enterprise dashboard	Enterprise dashboard (self-managed Grafana)
Scenario	Monitor cloud services. Monitor multiple clouds at the same time. Monitor hybrid clouds. Monitor metrics across multiple Alibaba Cloud accounts.	Monitor cloud services. Monitor multiple clouds at the same time. Monitor hybrid clouds. Monitor metrics across multiple Alibaba Cloud accounts.
Metric source	Alibaba Cloud services Self-managed data centers AWS or Tencent Cloud services	Alibaba Cloud services Self-managed data centers AWS or Tencent Cloud services
Dimension of metric data	Metrics identify instance IDs, for example, instanceid. Metrics identify IP addresses, regions, and tags, for example, ip, regionid, and tag.	Metrics identify instance IDs, for example, instanceid. Metrics identify IP addresses, regions, and tags, for example, ip, regionid, and tag.
Data retention period	The data retention period ranges from 15 days to 376 days. For more information, see Create a namespace.	The data retention period ranges from 15 days to 376 days. For more information, see Create a namespace.
Installation and maintenance costs	You do not need to install or maintain the service.	You must install Grafana.
Billing method	Paid service. You are billed based on the size of data that is collected.	Paid service. You are billed based on the size of data that is collected.
Reference	View metric data on an enterprise monitoring dashboard	View metric data by using self-managed on-premises Grafana