Before you begin

With this extension, you can create a dashboard that allows you to visualize and analyze logs from IBM Cloud® Databases for MySQL. This extension provides visibility into log data to monitor performance, detect errors, and ensure operational health. It structures log messages and enables alerts for critical issues such as service downtime, SSL failures, and replication errors.

In IBM Cloud Logs, logs that are generated by IBM Cloud services (known as platform logs) include metadata fields that you can use to enhance searches and analyze the data.

• applicationName: The application name is the environment that produces and sends logs to IBM Cloud Logs. It is set to ibm-platform-logs.
• subsystemName: The subsystem name is the service or application that produces and sends logs to IBM Cloud Logs. It is set to database-for-mysql:<instanceID> where <instanceID> is the IBM Cloud® Databases for MySQL instance ID.

In IBM Cloud, you must configure IBM Cloud Logs Routing to route logs to the IBM Cloud Logs service.

Before you can monitor logs that are generated in an IBM Cloud account, you must configure the IBM Cloud Logs Routing service in the account to define the destination where you want to monitor the logs.

• You can configure 1 or more IBM Cloud Logs instances in the account.
• Platform logs generated in the region are routed to the IBM Cloud Logs instance configured in IBM Cloud Logs Routing. The IBM Cloud Logs instance can be in the same region, or in a different region, in the account.
• You must define a service to service authorization between IBM Cloud Logs Routing and IBM Cloud Logs to grant permissions to the IBM Cloud Logs Routing service to send logs to the IBM Cloud Logs service.

For more information, see:

• Getting started with IBM Cloud Logs Routing
• IBM Cloud® Databases for MySQL logging

What this extension deploys

This extension includes one or more items.

Before deploying this extension, make sure that deploying the extension will not cause you to exceed limits for your IBM Cloud Logs instance. If deploying the extension results in limits being exceeded, the deployment will fail.

Deploying the extension

You can deploy this extension in any IBM Cloud Logs instance that collects IBM Cloud® Databases for MySQL logs. This extension includes a set of pre-configured resources such as dashboards, views, and alerts that help you monitor critical metrics, identify anomalies, and optimize your system's performance.

For more information about deploying the extension, see Deploying, managing, and removing IBM Cloud Logs extensions.

After deploying, verify that the extension configuration handles data in a way that matches your IBM Cloud Logs instance configuration. For example, if you have TCO policies sending data to the Analyze and alert pipeline, you will need to change the dashboard configured by this extension to All Logs instead of Priority insights.

Dashboard

One dashboard is provided providing data about IBM Cloud® Databases for MySQL logs including:

• Total log count
• Logs received over time
• Logs by severity
• Logs by database member
• Actions with password

Alerts

You can deploy any of the following alerts:

• Logs not detected in the last hour: No logs received from the MySQL service in the past hour, possibly due to logging misconfiguration, service downtime, or connectivity issues.
• Instance shutdown detected: The database instance is shutting down within the last 10 minutes, potentially causing service interruptions or database unavailability.
• Issue with SSL certificate: A problem has been detected with the SSL certificate, which might lead to insecure database connections or connectivity issues.
• Sync source to replica issue: A critical error occurred during database synchronization, potentially leading to data inconsistency or replication failure.

Rules

You can deploy any of the following rules:

• Replace the message text to avoid mapping exceptions: Replaces the message key with MySQLMessage to avoid ingestion or mapping exceptions in the logging pipeline.
• Extract the log message into the log_message field: Extracts the full content of message.message into a new field log_message to simplify search, analysis, and alerting.