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Verify that your MySQL database, Grafana Cloud account, and Alloy installation meet the requirements for Database Observability.

Estimated time: 2 min

Check requirements

Before starting the setup, verify that your environment meets the requirements for Database Observability. Getting these right upfront prevents troubleshooting later.

Grafana Cloud requirements

RequirementDetails
AccountGrafana Cloud account with Editor or Admin role
Database ObservabilityActivated in your Grafana Cloud stack. Open Observability > Database in the navigation menu and click Activate Database Observability if the app isn’t already active.
StackAccess to Grafana Cloud Mimir (metrics) and Grafana Cloud Loki (logs) data sources
PermissionsAbility to view and create dashboards

MySQL requirements

RequirementDetails
VersionMySQL 8.0 or later (MySQL 5.7 and earlier are not supported)
MariaDBNot supported — Performance Schema implementation differs from MySQL
Performance Schemaperformance_schema set to ON (the default in MySQL 8.0+)
Query capture settingsmax_digest_length, performance_schema_max_digest_length, and performance_schema_max_sql_text_length set to 4096. These are startup variables, so changing them requires a MySQL restart.
Performance Schema consumersevents_statements_cpu, events_waits_current, and events_waits_history enabled, or the monitoring user allowed to enable them so Alloy can manage them
Monitoring userUser with PROCESS and REPLICATION CLIENT on *.*, SELECT on performance_schema.*, and SELECT, SHOW VIEW on the schemas you want to monitor
ConnectionAlloy connects directly to the MySQL server, not through a proxy or connection pooler

Grafana Alloy requirements

RequirementDetails
VersionGrafana Alloy 1.17.0 or later. Database Observability is generally available, so no --stability.level flag is required.
NetworkOutbound access to Grafana Cloud endpoints
Database accessNetwork 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)
  • You can change MySQL configuration and restart MySQL if the query capture settings need to change
  • 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.