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Section 1 · Database monitoring fundamentals

What you need to follow the journey's hands-on paths

Estimated time: 2 min

For hands-on exercises

Both approaches need a free Grafana Cloud account (sign up free) and Grafana Alloy, which collects data and sends it to Grafana Cloud. What you need beyond that depends on which approach you’re setting up.

Database integration requirements

For a database integration you need a running instance of a supported database: MongoDB, Redis, Memcached, Cassandra, Oracle, MySQL, or PostgreSQL. You configure an exporter for that database as part of setup.

Database Observability version requirements

For Database Observability, you need:

  • A running MySQL 8.0 or later or PostgreSQL 14 or later database
  • A database user with monitoring privileges
  • Versions shown in the following table
RequirementDetails
Grafana AlloyVersion 1.17.0 or later
MySQLVersion 8.0 or later (MySQL 5.7 and MariaDB aren’t supported)
PostgreSQLVersion 14 or later, with the pg_stat_statements extension enabled in each database you monitor

Database Observability is available on the Grafana Cloud free tier and needs the Editor or Admin role. It is billed as a per-host hourly fee for each connected database, plus metrics and logs usage. On the free tier, metrics and logs, including query samples, are retained for 14 days. See Database Observability pricing.

The monitoring user needs two kinds of access. Query statistics need the base privileges: for MySQL, PROCESS, REPLICATION CLIENT, and SELECT on performance_schema; for PostgreSQL, the pg_monitor and pg_read_all_stats roles. Schema details and explain plans also need access to the tables you want to see. Grant SELECT and SHOW VIEW on each MySQL schema you monitor, or on all schemas if you want every schema. For PostgreSQL, grant USAGE on each schema and SELECT on all tables in that schema, or grant pg_read_all_data if you want every object.

If you’re running MySQL 5.7, MariaDB, or an older PostgreSQL version, Database Observability isn’t available for those.

A database integration can still monitor the database instance’s overall health, such as connections, throughput, and replication status. However, that’s a different capability, not a substitute. An integration reports aggregate, instance-level metrics, not the per-query explain plans, wait events, and query samples that Database Observability provides.

TopicWhy it helps
Basic Grafana navigationYou’ll use dashboards and the Configuration page.
Terminal or command line basicsAlloy installation uses the CLI.
Basic database administrationYou’ll create a monitoring user and configure permissions.

Just exploring? You can complete the journey without hands-on practice. The concepts are valuable on their own.