Why it matters
Databases sit behind most applications, so when one slows down or runs into trouble you need visibility to find out what’s happening. Grafana Cloud gives you two ways to get answers:
- Database integrations provide database-level metrics, prebuilt dashboards, and alerts across a wide range of databases.
- Database Observability goes deeper for MySQL and PostgreSQL, showing which individual queries are slow and why, with explain plans, wait events, and query samples.
Increasingly it’s developers and SREs, not dedicated DBAs, who have to keep databases healthy. This journey introduces both approaches so you can choose the right one for each database, without switching tools and without deep database expertise.
This journey is for you if…
- You run one or more databases in Grafana Cloud and want to monitor their health with metrics, prebuilt dashboards, and alerts.
- You run MySQL or PostgreSQL and want query-level detail like explain plans, wait events, and query samples, not just aggregate metrics.
- You’re a developer or SRE managing databases without a dedicated DBA, and you need to troubleshoot performance yourself.
- You’re new to monitoring databases in Grafana and want a guided introduction to setting it up.
No database experience required
This journey assumes you have a database running, but you don’t need deep database administration skills. The hands-on learning paths walk you through setup step by step, including creating a monitoring user and configuring permissions.
This might not be the right journey if…
- Your database isn’t one this journey covers. Database Observability supports MySQL and PostgreSQL, and the integrations covered here are for MongoDB, Redis, Memcached, Cassandra, and Oracle, plus MySQL and PostgreSQL.
- You want to monitor your applications or infrastructure rather than your databases. This journey focuses on database monitoring.