MySQL (deprecated)

Use this Splunk Observability Cloud integration for the MySQL monitor. See benefits, install, configuration, and metrics.

CAUTION: The MySQL monitor is now deprecated and will reach of End of Support on October 31st, 2024. During this period only critical security and bug fixes are provided. When End of Support is reached, the monitor will be removed and no longer be supported, and you won’t be able to use it to send data to Splunk Observability Cloud. To monitor your MySQL databases you can use the native OpenTelemetry MySQL receiver instead. See MySQL receiver to learn more.

The Splunk Distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector uses the Smart Agent receiver with the MySQL monitor type to retrieve metrics and logs from MySQL.

This monitor connects to a MySQL instance and reports on the values returned by a SHOW STATUS command, which include the following:

Number of commands processed
Table and row operations (handlers)
State of the query cache
Status of MySQL threads
Network traffic

This integration is only available on Kubernetes and Linux.

Benefits

After you configure the integration, you can access these features:

View metrics. You can create your own custom dashboards, and most monitors provide built-in dashboards as well. For information about dashboards, see View dashboards in Splunk Observability Cloud.
View a data-driven visualization of the physical servers, virtual machines, AWS instances, and other resources in your environment that are visible to Infrastructure Monitoring. For information about navigators, see Use navigators in Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring.
Access the Metric Finder and search for metrics sent by the monitor. For information, see Search the Metric Finder and Metadata Catalog.

Installation

Follow these steps to deploy this integration:

Deploy the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector to your host or container platform:
- Install on Kubernetes
- Install on Linux
Configure the monitor, as described in the Configuration section.
Restart the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector.

Creating a MySQL user for this monitor

To create a MySQL user for this monitor, run the following commands:

CREATE USER '<username>'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '<password>';
-- Give appropriate permissions
-- ("GRANT USAGE" is synonymous to "no privileges")
GRANT USAGE ON *.* TO '<username>'@'localhost';
-- Permissions for the stats options
GRANT REPLICATION CLIENT ON *.* TO '<username>'@'localhost';

The new user only has enough privileges to connect to the database. Additional privileges are not required.

Note: If you want to define seperate DB names to connect to, then you have to grant at least SELECT permission to the user.

GRANT SELECT ON <db_name>.* TO '<user_name>'@'localhost';

Considerations on localhost

For connections to localhost, MySQL programs attempt to connect to the local server by using a Unix socket file. To ensure that the client makes a TCP/IP connection to the local server specify a host name value of 127.0.0.1, or the IP address or name of the local server.

Configuration

To use this integration of a Smart Agent monitor with the Collector:

Include the Smart Agent receiver in your configuration file.
Add the monitor type to the Collector configuration, both in the receiver and pipelines sections.
- See how to Use Smart Agent monitors with the Collector.
- See how to set up the Smart Agent receiver.
- For a list of common configuration options, refer to Common configuration settings for monitors.
- Learn more about the Collector at Get started: Understand and use the Collector.

Example

To activate this integration, add the following to your Collector configuration:

receivers:
  smartagent/mysql:
    type: collectd/mysql
    host: 127.0.0.1
    port: 3306
    username: <global-username-for-all-db>
    password: <global-password-for-all-db>
    databases:
      - name: <name-of-db>
        username: <username> #Overrides global username
        password: <password> #Overrides global password

The following is a sample YAML configuration that shows how to connect multiple MySQL databases:

receivers:
  smartagent/mysql:
    type: collectd/mysql
    host: 127.0.0.1
    port: 3306
    databases:
      - name: <name>
        username: <username>
        password: <password>
      - name: <name>
        username: <username>
        password: <password>

Next, add the monitor to the service.pipelines.metrics.receivers section of your configuration file:

service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      receivers: [smartagent/mysql]

Configuration settings

The following table shows the configuration options for this monitor:


Option	Required	Type	Description
`host`	Yes	`string`	Hostname or IP address of the MySQL instance. For example, `127.0.0.1`.
`port`	Yes	`integer`	The port of the MySQL instance. For example, `3306`.
`databases`	Yes	`list of objects`	A list of databases along with optional authentication credentials.
`username`	No	`string`	Username for all databases. You can override it by defining each username in the `databases` object.
`password`	No	`string`	Password for all databases. You can override it by defining each username in the `databases` object.
`reportHost`	No	`bool`	When set to `true`, the `host` dimension is set to the name of the MySQL database host. When `false`, the monitor uses the global `hostname` configuration instead. The default value is `false`. When `disableHostDimensions` is set to `true`, the host name in which the agent or monitor is running is not used for the `host` metric dimension value.
`innodbStats`	No	`bool`	Collects InnoDB statistics. Before activating InnoDB metrics make sure that you granted the `PROCESS` privilege to your user. The default value is `false`.

The nested databases configuration object has the following fields:


Option	Required	Type	Description
`name`	Yes	`string`	Name of the database.
`username`	No	`string`	Username of the database.
`password`	No	`string`	Password of the database.

Metrics

The following metrics are available for this integration:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/signalfx/splunk-otel-collector/main/internal/signalfx-agent/pkg/monitors/collectd/mysql/metadata.yaml

Notes

To learn more about the available in Splunk Observability Cloud see Metric types.
In host-based subscription plans, default metrics are those metrics included in host-based subscriptions in Splunk Observability Cloud, such as host, container, or bundled metrics. Custom metrics are not provided by default and might be subject to charges. See Metric categories for more information.
In MTS-based subscription plans, all metrics are custom.
To add additional metrics, see how to configure extraMetrics in Add additional metrics.

Troubleshooting

If you are a Splunk Observability Cloud customer and are not able to see your data in Splunk Observability Cloud, you can get help in the following ways.

Available to Splunk Observability Cloud customers

Submit a case in the Splunk Support Portal.
Contact Splunk Support.

Available to prospective customers and free trial users

Ask a question and get answers through community support at Splunk Answers.
Join the Splunk #observability user group Slack channel to communicate with customers, partners, and Splunk employees worldwide. To join, see Chat groups.

Documentation