Prometheus, a popular open-source monitoring tool known for its flexibility in collecting time series metrics, can be effectively connected to Grafana Cloud to enhance data visualization and actionability. This process involves setting up a local Prometheus instance and using the Prometheus node exporter to gather machine metrics such as CPU, memory, and disk space. Once these metrics are collected, they can be linked to Grafana Cloud to benefit from its robust, cloud-hosted observability features, which include dashboards and alerts. A secure tunneling tool like ngrok is used to expose the local Prometheus instance to Grafana Cloud, facilitating the setup of data sources without needing additional infrastructure management. By importing a prebuilt dashboard, users can easily visualize system metrics in Grafana Cloud, which offers a generous free tier and scalable plans for various use cases.