Test the MySQL monitoring connection

In this milestone, you verify that Grafana Alloy is successfully collecting MySQL metrics and logs and sending them to your Grafana Cloud instance. Testing the connection ensures that your monitoring setup is working correctly before installing dashboards and alerts.

The MySQL integration provides a built-in connection test feature that validates both the configuration and data flow to Grafana Cloud. You can also verify data collection by checking for MySQL metrics in your Grafana Cloud instance.

To test the MySQL monitoring connection, complete the following steps:

1. On the MySQL integration page in Grafana Cloud, scroll to the Test connection section.

2. Click the Test connection button to validate that data is flowing from your MySQL instance to Grafana Cloud.

3. Wait for the connection test to complete. A successful test indicates that:

   • Grafana Alloy is running and configured correctly
   • MySQL metrics are being collected
   • Data is reaching your Grafana Cloud instance

4. To manually verify data collection, navigate to Explore in your Grafana Cloud instance.

5. Select your MySQL data source and query for MySQL metrics:

   For example, search for mysql_up to verify that the MySQL exporter is reporting the database status.

6. Check that the metric returns a value of 1, indicating that MySQL is up and responding to monitoring queries.

The connection test confirms that your MySQL monitoring setup is working correctly and that metrics are flowing to Grafana Cloud.

In the next milestone, you install the pre-built MySQL dashboards and alerts to start monitoring your database.