Getting started with the Grafana Cloud Agent, a remote_write-focused Prometheus agent

The Grafana Cloud Agent, introduced as a remote_write-focused Prometheus agent, is a streamlined version of Prometheus that excludes querying and local storage but retains service discovery, relabeling, WAL, and remote_write capabilities. With its v0.4.0 release, it supports "integrations," which are embedded exporters that facilitate metric scraping and remote writing without manual configuration, simplifying setup. The two initial integrations are node_exporter for UNIX-based hosts and agent for self-scraping, with the possibility of manual configuration for additional exporters like blackbox_exporter. This setup provides a Prometheus-like environment for metric retrieval and transmission to endpoints such as Grafana Cloud, streamlining configurations and enhancing ease of use. Future releases aim to expand integration options, further reducing the complexity of obtaining and managing metrics within the Grafana ecosystem.