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Learn how to configure Grafana Alloy with the MySQL integration snippets to collect metrics and logs from your MySQL database.

Estimated time: 2 min

Configure Grafana Alloy for MySQL monitoring

In this milestone, you configure Grafana Alloy using the configuration snippets provided by the MySQL integration. These snippets enable Grafana Alloy to collect MySQL metrics and logs and send them to your Grafana Cloud instance.

The configuration includes components for MySQL metrics collection using the Prometheus MySQL exporter component and log collection using Loki source file components.

To configure Grafana Alloy for MySQL monitoring, complete the following steps:

  1. On the MySQL integration page in Grafana Cloud, scroll to the Set up Grafana Alloy to use the MySQL integration section.

  2. At the bottom of the snippet, click Copy to clipboard.

  3. Open the Grafana Alloy configuration file on your system. For example, on a Linux machine, run:

    sudo nano /etc/alloy/config.alloy

  4. Paste the integration snippet into the configuration file.

  5. Leave data_source_name set to local.file.mysql_secret.content. The snippet reads the MySQL connection string from a secret file, so the password is not stored in the Alloy configuration.

    On the machine where Grafana Alloy runs, create that file with the monitoring user from the previous milestone:

    echo -n 'alloy_monitor:secure_password@(localhost:3306)/' > /var/lib/alloy/mysql-secret

    Replace secure_password with the password you set for alloy_monitor. Replace localhost:3306 if MySQL is on a different host or port. The file must contain only the connection string, with no trailing newline.

  6. Review the log path in the logs configuration and update it if necessary:

    • For Linux systems, the default path is /var/log/mysql/*.log
    • For Windows systems, the default path is C:\ProgramData\MySQL\MySQL Server*\Data\*.log

  7. Save the configuration file and exit the editor.

  8. Restart the Grafana Alloy service to apply the configuration. On Linux, run:

    sudo systemctl restart alloy

  9. Check the service status to ensure it started successfully. On Linux, run:

    sudo systemctl status alloy

The Grafana Alloy service should restart successfully and begin collecting MySQL metrics and logs.

In the next milestone, you test the connection to verify that data is being collected and sent to Grafana Cloud.

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