Setting Up Database Monitoring for self hosted MySQL

Database Monitoring provides deep visibility into your MySQL 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 MySQL database:

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

Before you begin

Supported MySQL versions

5.6, 5.7, or 8.0+

Supported Agent versions

7.36.1+

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 one percent of query execution time on the database and less than one percent of CPU.

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

Proxies, load balancers, and connection poolers

The 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. While this can be an anti-pattern for client applications, each Agent must have knowledge of the underlying hostname and should stick to a single host for its lifetime, even in cases of failover. If the Datadog Agent connects to different hosts while it is running, the values of metrics will be incorrect.

Data security considerations

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

Configure MySQL settings

To collect query metrics, samples, and explain plans, enable the MySQL Performance Schema and configure the following Performance Schema Options, either on the command line or in configuration files (for example, mysql.conf):

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 in order 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 MySQL documentation for more info.

CREATE USER datadog@'%' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password 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@'%';

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

Create the following schema:

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

Create the 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@'%';

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@'%';

Install the Agent

Installing the Datadog Agent also installs the MySQL check which is required for Database Monitoring on MySQL. If you haven’t already installed the Agent for your MySQL 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 MySQL 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 MySQL metrics:

init_config:

instances:
  - dbm: true
    host: 127.0.0.1
    port: 3306
    username: datadog
    password: '<YOUR_CHOSEN_PASSWORD>' # from the CREATE USER step earlier

Note: Wrap your password in single quotes in case a special character is present.

Note that 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.

Restart the Agent to start sending MySQL 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 MySQL 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 MySQL.
   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 MySQL 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:"
           # If using mysql version <5.7, use the following rules instead:
           # - type: multi_line
           #   name: new_slow_query_log_entry
           #   pattern: "# Time|# User@Host"
           # - type: exclude_at_match
           #   name: exclude_timestamp_only_line
           #   pattern: "# 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 visit 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