Before starting the setup, verify that your environment meets the requirements for Database Observability. Getting these right upfront prevents troubleshooting later.
Grafana Cloud requirements
Requirement
Details
Account
Grafana Cloud account with Editor or Admin role
Database Observability
Activated in your Grafana Cloud stack. Go to Databases in the navigation menu to activate it.
Stack
Access to Grafana Cloud Mimir (metrics) and Grafana Cloud Loki (logs) data sources
Permissions
Ability to view and create dashboards
MySQL requirements
Requirement
Details
Version
MySQL 8.0 or later (MySQL 5.7 and earlier are not supported)
MariaDB
Not supported — Performance Schema implementation differs from MySQL
Performance Schema
Must be enabled (enabled by default in MySQL 8.0+)
Monitoring user
User with PROCESS, REPLICATION CLIENT, and SELECT privileges on performance_schema
Grafana Alloy requirements
Requirement
Details
Version
Grafana Alloy 1.14.0 or later
Stability flag
Run with --stability.level=public-preview
Network
Outbound access to Grafana Cloud endpoints
Database access
Network connectivity to your MySQL instance
Checklist
Before proceeding, verify:
Grafana Cloud account is active with appropriate permissions
Database Observability is activated in your Grafana Cloud stack
MySQL version is 8.0 or later (not MariaDB)
Network connectivity exists between the Alloy host and your MySQL database
Network connectivity exists between the Alloy host and Grafana Cloud
You have administrative access to create a MySQL monitoring user
In the next milestone, you’ll prepare your MySQL database for monitoring.
