Requirements and overhead

Review system requirements, database permissions, and performance impact before setting up Database Observability. This page covers what you need to run Alloy, what access your monitoring user requires, and how much overhead to expect on your databases.

System requirements

Grafana Cloud

Requirement	Details
Account	Grafana Cloud account with Editor or Admin role
Stack	Access to Grafana Cloud Mimir (metrics) and Grafana Cloud Loki (logs) data sources
Permissions	Ability to view and create dashboards

Grafana Alloy

Requirement	Details
Version	Grafana Alloy 1.13.0 or later
Stability level	Run with `--stability.level=public-preview` flag
Network	Outbound access to Grafana Cloud endpoints
Database access	Network connectivity to monitored databases

PostgreSQL requirements

Requirement	Minimum version	Notes
PostgreSQL	14	PostgreSQL 13 and earlier are not supported
`pg_stat_statements`	Required	Extension must be installed and enabled; requires restart
Monitoring user	Required	User with `pg_monitor` and `pg_read_all_stats` roles

For detailed configuration and permission setup, refer to Set up PostgreSQL.

MySQL requirements

Requirement	Minimum version	Notes
MySQL	8.0	MySQL 5.7 and earlier are not supported
MariaDB	Not supported	`Performance Schema` implementation differs from MySQL
`Performance Schema`	Required	Enabled by default in MySQL 8.0+
Monitoring user	Required	User with `PROCESS`, `REPLICATION CLIENT`, and `SELECT` privileges on `performance_schema`

For detailed configuration and permission setup, refer to Set up MySQL.

Performance overhead

Database Observability is designed to minimize impact on your production databases. Understanding the overhead helps you make informed decisions about collection intervals and features.

Database query overhead

The monitoring queries executed by Alloy are lightweight read operations:

Query type	Database	Notes
`pg_stat_statements`	PostgreSQL	Reads cached statistics
`pg_stat_activity`	PostgreSQL	Reads active session info
`Performance Schema`	MySQL	Reads cached statistics
Query samples (MySQL)	MySQL	Captures running queries
Query samples (PostgreSQL)	PostgreSQL	Captures running queries
Schema details	Both	Cached, reads metadata
Explain plans	Both	Runs EXPLAIN on sampled queries

Explain plan considerations:

Explain plans execute EXPLAIN (not EXPLAIN ANALYZE) on sampled queries. This operation:

Does not execute the query
Uses cached statistics to estimate costs
Has minimal overhead for most queries
Can be disabled if needed via collector configuration

Reduce overhead

If you need to reduce monitoring overhead:

Increase collection intervals: Change collect_interval from 1 minute to 5 minutes
Reduce explain plan sampling: Set explain_plans.per_collect_ratio to 0.5 or lower
Exclude schemas: Use exclude_schemas (MySQL) or exclude_databases (PostgreSQL) to skip non-critical databases

Checklist before setup

Before proceeding with setup, verify:

Grafana Cloud account is active with appropriate permissions
Database version meets minimum requirements
Required extensions/features are enabled (pg_stat_statements, Performance Schema)
Network connectivity exists between Alloy location and databases
Network connectivity exists between Alloy location and Grafana Cloud
Monitoring user credentials are ready
Database team is aware of monitoring overhead expectations