---
title: "Where database monitoring fits | Grafana Labs"
description: "Understanding where database monitoring fits in your observability journey"
---

> For a curated documentation index, see [llms.txt](/llms.txt). For the complete documentation index, see [llms-full.txt](/llms-full.txt).

## Observability builds in layers

## Database monitoring is foundational

| Level       | Focus          | Question answered                                 |
|-------------|----------------|---------------------------------------------------|
| **Level 1** | Infrastructure | “Is my server healthy?”                           |
| **Level 1** | Databases      | “Is my database healthy? Which queries are slow?” |
| **Level 2** | Services       | “Which service is the problem?”                   |
| **Level 3** | Transactions   | “Why is this request slow?”                       |
| **Level 4** | Custom logic   | “What’s happening in my code?”                    |

Databases sit at the foundation of your observability stack. Application performance depends on database performance. If your database is slow, your application is slow.

> Without visibility into query performance, connection usage, and replication health, troubleshooting application issues means guessing.