Slide 4 of 4

Prerequisites

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 permissions
  • 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 (query statistics)

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.

Script

If you’d like to follow along with the hands-on learning paths, here’s what you’ll need. Both approaches use a free Grafana Cloud account and Grafana Alloy to collect data and send it to Grafana Cloud. What you need beyond that depends on which approach you’re setting up.

For a database integration, you need a running instance of a supported database, such as MongoDB, Redis, Memcached, Cassandra, Oracle, MySQL, or PostgreSQL.

For Database Observability, you need MySQL 8.0 or later or PostgreSQL 14 or later, plus a database user with monitoring permissions. MariaDB and older versions aren’t supported by Database Observability, though a database integration can still track that instance’s overall health.

If you’re just exploring the concepts, you can complete the journey without any hands-on practice.

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