Database Monitoring provides deep visibility into your MariaDB databases by exposing query metrics, query samples, explain plans, connection data, system metrics, and telemetry for the InnoDB storage engine.

The Agent collects telemetry directly from the database by logging in as a read-only user. Do the following setup to enable Database Monitoring with your MariaDB database:

1. Configure database parameters
2. Grant the Agent access to the database
3. Install the Agent

Before you begin

Supported MariaDB versions

10.5, 10.6, 10.11, or 11.4

Database Monitoring for MariaDB is supported with known limitations.

Supported Agent versions

7.61.0+

Performance impact

The default Agent configuration for Database Monitoring is conservative, but you can adjust settings such as the collection interval and query sampling rate to better suit your needs. For most workloads, the Agent represents less than 1% of query execution time on the database and less than 1% of CPU.

Database Monitoring runs as an integration on top of the base Agent (see benchmarks).

Proxies, load balancers, and connection poolers

The Datadog Agent must connect directly to the host being monitored. For self-hosted databases, 127.0.0.1 or the socket is preferred. The Agent should not connect to the database through a proxy, load balancer, or connection pooler. If the Agent connects to different hosts while it is running (as in the case of failover, load balancing, and so on), the Agent calculates the difference in statistics between two hosts, producing inaccurate metrics.

Data security considerations

See Sensitive information for information about what data the Agent collects from your databases and how to keep it secure.

Configure MariaDB settings

To collect query metrics, samples, and explain plans, enable the MariaDB performance schema and configure the following performance schema options, either on the command line or in configuration files (for example, mysql.conf):

Note: Unlike MySQL, MariaDB ships with performance_schema turned off by default. You must explicitly enable it.

Note: A recommended practice is to allow the agent to enable the performance-schema-consumer-* settings dynamically at runtime, as part of granting the Agent access. See Runtime setup consumers.

Grant the Agent access

The Datadog Agent requires read-only access to the database to collect statistics and queries.

The following instructions grant the Agent permission to login from any host using datadog@'%'. You can restrict the datadog user to be allowed to login only from localhost by using datadog@'localhost'. See the MariaDB documentation for more info.

Create the datadog user and grant basic permissions:

CREATE USER datadog@'%' IDENTIFIED by '<UNIQUEPASSWORD>';
ALTER USER datadog@'%' WITH MAX_USER_CONNECTIONS 5;
GRANT REPLICATION CLIENT ON *.* TO datadog@'%';
GRANT PROCESS ON *.* TO datadog@'%';
GRANT SELECT ON performance_schema.* TO datadog@'%';

Blocking-query collection uses information_schema.INNODB_LOCK_WAITS and INNODB_TRX, together with performance_schema, so the PROCESS and SELECT ON performance_schema.* grants above are sufficient; no additional grant is required. Blocking-query collection is disabled by default. Enable it with query_activity.collect_blocking_queries: true in your instance configuration.

Create the following schema:

CREATE SCHEMA IF NOT EXISTS datadog;
GRANT EXECUTE ON datadog.* to datadog@'%';

Create the explain_statement procedure to enable the Agent to collect explain plans:

DELIMITER $$
CREATE PROCEDURE datadog.explain_statement(IN query TEXT)
    SQL SECURITY DEFINER
BEGIN
    SET @explain := CONCAT('EXPLAIN FORMAT=json ', query);
    PREPARE stmt FROM @explain;
    EXECUTE stmt;
    DEALLOCATE PREPARE stmt;
END $$
DELIMITER ;

Additionally, create this procedure in every schema from which you want to collect explain plans. Replace <YOUR_SCHEMA> with your database schema:

DELIMITER $$
CREATE PROCEDURE <YOUR_SCHEMA>.explain_statement(IN query TEXT)
    SQL SECURITY DEFINER
BEGIN
    SET @explain := CONCAT('EXPLAIN FORMAT=json ', query);
    PREPARE stmt FROM @explain;
    EXECUTE stmt;
    DEALLOCATE PREPARE stmt;
END $$
DELIMITER ;
GRANT EXECUTE ON PROCEDURE <YOUR_SCHEMA>.explain_statement TO datadog@'%';

To collect index metrics, grant the datadog user an additional privilege:

GRANT SELECT ON mysql.innodb_index_stats TO datadog@'%';

Runtime setup consumers

Datadog recommends that you create the following procedure to give the Agent the ability to enable performance_schema.events_* consumers at runtime.

DELIMITER $$
CREATE PROCEDURE datadog.enable_events_statements_consumers()
    SQL SECURITY DEFINER
BEGIN
    UPDATE performance_schema.setup_consumers SET enabled='YES' WHERE name LIKE 'events_statements_%';
    UPDATE performance_schema.setup_consumers SET enabled='YES' WHERE name = 'events_waits_current';
END $$
DELIMITER ;
GRANT EXECUTE ON PROCEDURE datadog.enable_events_statements_consumers TO datadog@'%';

Securely store your password

Store your password using secret management software such as Vault. You can then reference this password as ENC[<SECRET_NAME>] in your Agent configuration files: for example, ENC[datadog_user_database_password]. See Secrets Management for more information.

The examples on this page use datadog_user_database_password to refer to the name of the secret where your password is stored. It is possible to reference your password in plain text, but this is not recommended.

Collecting schemas

Starting with Agent 7.65, the Datadog Agent can collect schema information from MariaDB databases. Enable it with collect_schemas.enabled: true in your instance configuration (use schemas_collection instead on Agent 7.68 and earlier). Schema collection is disabled by default.

instances:
  - dbm: true
    ...
    collect_schemas:
      enabled: true

On MariaDB 10.5 and later (like MySQL), INFORMATION_SCHEMA only exposes a table to a user that holds a privilege on it, so without a grant the datadog user sees no tables. Grant the REFERENCES privilege to make table metadata visible without giving the Agent the ability to read table data:

GRANT REFERENCES ON *.* TO datadog@'%';

REFERENCES is also required to collect foreign-key delete_rule and update_rule values from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.REFERENTIAL_CONSTRAINTS; the table-level SELECT privilege does not expose that view.

See Exploring Database Schemas for the available collect_schemas tuning options.

Install the Agent

Installing the Datadog Agent also installs the MySQL check, which is used to monitor MariaDB and is required for Database Monitoring on MariaDB. If you haven’t already installed the Agent for your MariaDB database host, see the Agent installation instructions.

To configure this check for an Agent running on a host:

Edit the mysql.d/conf.yaml file, in the conf.d/ folder at the root of your Agent’s configuration directory to start collecting your MariaDB metrics and logs. See the sample mysql.d/conf.yaml for all available configuration options, including those for custom metrics.

Metric collection

Add this configuration block to your mysql.d/conf.yaml to collect MariaDB metrics:

init_config:

instances:
  - dbm: true
    host: 127.0.0.1
    port: 3306
    username: datadog
    password: 'ENC[datadog_user_database_password]' # from the CREATE USER step earlier

Note: The datadog user should be set up in the MySQL integration configuration as host: 127.0.0.1 instead of localhost. Alternatively, you may also use sock.

Metrics and events are tagged with dbms_flavor:mariadb so you can distinguish MariaDB data from MySQL data.

Restart the Agent to start sending MariaDB metrics to Datadog.

Log collection (optional)

In addition to telemetry collected from the database by the Agent, you can also choose to send your database logs directly to Datadog.

1. By default MariaDB logs everything in /var/log/syslog which requires root access to read. To make the logs more accessible, follow these steps:

   1. Edit /etc/mysql/conf.d/mysqld_safe_syslog.cnf and comment out all lines.
   2. Edit /etc/mysql/my.cnf to enable the desired logging settings. For example, to enable general, error, and slow query logs, use the following configuration:

     [mysqld_safe]
     log_error = /var/log/mysql/mysql_error.log
   
     [mysqld]
     general_log = on
     general_log_file = /var/log/mysql/mysql.log
     log_error = /var/log/mysql/mysql_error.log
     slow_query_log = on
     slow_query_log_file = /var/log/mysql/mysql_slow.log
     long_query_time = 3
   

   3. Save the file and restart MariaDB.
   4. Make sure the Agent has read access to the /var/log/mysql directory and all of the files within. Double-check your logrotate configuration to make sure these files are taken into account and that the permissions are correctly set. In /etc/logrotate.d/mysql-server there should be something similar to:

     /var/log/mysql.log /var/log/mysql/mysql.log /var/log/mysql/mysql_slow.log {
             daily
             rotate 7
             missingok
             create 644 mysql adm
             Compress
     }
   

2. Collecting logs is disabled by default in the Datadog Agent, enable it in your datadog.yaml file:

   logs_enabled: true
   

3. Add this configuration block to your mysql.d/conf.yaml file to start collecting your MariaDB logs:

   logs:
     - type: file
       path: "<ERROR_LOG_FILE_PATH>"
       source: mysql
       service: "<SERVICE_NAME>"
   
     - type: file
       path: "<SLOW_QUERY_LOG_FILE_PATH>"
       source: mysql
       service: "<SERVICE_NAME>"
       log_processing_rules:
         - type: multi_line
           name: new_slow_query_log_entry
           pattern: "# Time:"
           # If mysqld was started with `--log-short-format`, use:
           # pattern: "# Query_time:"
   
     - type: file
       path: "<GENERAL_LOG_FILE_PATH>"
       source: mysql
       service: "<SERVICE_NAME>"
       # For multiline logs, if they start by the date with the format yyyy-mm-dd uncomment the following processing rule
       # log_processing_rules:
       #   - type: multi_line
       #     name: new_log_start_with_date
       #     pattern: \d{4}\-(0?[1-9]|1[012])\-(0?[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])
       # If the logs start with a date with the format yymmdd but include a timestamp with each new second, rather than with each log, uncomment the following processing rule
       # log_processing_rules:
       #   - type: multi_line
       #     name: new_logs_do_not_always_start_with_timestamp
       #     pattern: \t\t\s*\d+\s+|\d{6}\s+\d{,2}:\d{2}:\d{2}\t\s*\d+\s+
   

4. Restart the Agent.

Validate

Run the Agent’s status subcommand and look for mysql under the Checks section, or see the Databases page to get started.

Troubleshooting

If you have installed and configured the integrations and Agent as described and it is not working as expected, see Troubleshooting.

Further reading

Additional helpful documentation, links, and articles:

Basic MySQL IntegrationDOCUMENTATION