PlanetScale is a hosted MySQL database SaaS, and while it’s got great uptime, you should be monitoring it for metrics if nothing else. While PlanetScale offers lots of features beyond your average MySQL install, monitoring it is surprisingly the same.
Although there are several ways to monitor it, I like to use Zabbix Agent2 because it works well and is easily expandable when you are monitoring more than one SQL instance, such as Dev, Staging, and Production.
Locate your SQL config file in Zabbix. It’s typically in /etc/zabbix/zabbix_agent2.d/mysql.conf under Linux, but if you can’t find it, just create one as a text file. Once you have that open, put something like this in it:
Plugins.Mysql.Sessions.staging.Uri=tcp://abcdef.connect.psdb.cloud:3306 Plugins.Mysql.Sessions.staging.User=8bev6varb7s6dasd Plugins.Mysql.Sessions.staging.Password=no87bt7uv5earsvbd7t6ni6abrsd
Plugins.Mysql.Sessions.staging.TLSConnect=verify_full Plugins.Mysql.Sessions.staging.TLSCAFile=/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt… but make sure you note a few things. First off, change the Uri, User, and Password values to what your configuration of PlaneScale is set up to handle. Also, remember that PlanetSCale only allows encrypted connections, so the lines with TLS are required, as well as an SSL cert. I’m assuming in this example that you already have certs kept in /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt. If not, set them up. I like to use Let’s Encrypt.
Also, note that the word staging on each line should match a string that makes sense to you. In this example, I’m setting up monitoring of a Staging server, so I used staging as my token. Whatever you set it to, it should be unique so that if you set up other SQL monitors, this value it unique.
If you’d like to check that this mysql.conf file is properly configured, you can run sudo -u zabbix zabbix_agent2 -t "mysql.ping[staging]" which will check to see if the server is up, and returns a value of 1 (one) if it is. Note if it returns a 0 (zero), the server is probably up, and your configuration file above is wrong. Also note the word staging is the same from the configuration file above. That’s not by accident. You can now refer to those confiration lines in Zabbix by staging – very handy. Assuming your test above is returning a 1 (one), you now need to figure Zabbix with your web UI.
From the Web UI, create a new host, and we’ll call this host mysqlMonitor. The name doesn’t matter, but make it simple and unique. On this Host, add in a Zabbix template called MySQL by Zabbix agent 2 which will do the bulk of our work, but since it’s a template, we need to add in a macro to the Host to get it working. I like to call my Host macro {$MYSQL.CONFIG.TOKEN} but naming it is up to you. Set the value for this macro to be staging – the name we defined above. Save this Host, and let’s look at the Zabbix Items the template has created for this Host. In the Items, you can edit any line, but as an example, we’ll pick one that looks like:
MySQL by Zabbix agent 2: MySQL: Get status variables: MySQL: Max used connectionsClick on the MySQL: Get status variables and if the Key field is greyed out, click on the Parent Items link. Now look at the Key field which should look like:
mysql.get_status_variables["{$MYSQL.DSN}","{$MYSQL.USER}","{$MYSQL.PASSWORD}"]
You want to replace it with mysql.get_status_variables[{$MYSQL.CONFIG.TOKEN}]
Go head and save this change. What you’ve done here, when Zabbix goes to query this server, use the variable $MYSQL.CONFIG.TOKEN and replace it with the value staging which points to your config file setup.If all goes well, you should be setting lots of data flowing in from the PlanetScale server you defined in your config file above. Happy Monitoring!