MySQL Monitor: A Simple MySQL Monitoring Script
As a sysadmin or DBA, having a quick way to monitor MySQL’s performance metrics can save a lot of time. Over the years, I’ve used many tools, but sometimes you just want something simple and lightweight but at the same time provides a ton of actionable insight. That’s where this script comes in.
I designed this script to provide a quick overview of the most important MySQL metrics and their purpose. It’s not meant to replace deeper tools like these. It’s mainly for those moments when you need to jump into the terminal and get the most important stats and move on.
Table of Contents
What the Script Does
The script uses mysqladmin extended-status to pull a selection of MySQL metrics and combines them with system memory stats for an overall view. The output is clean and formatted for readability, with explanations to help you understand the values. Here’s what it does:
- InnoDB Metrics: Tracks key buffer pool stats like free pages and write requests.
- Temporary Tables: Shows the number of temporary tables created in memory and on disk.
- Query Performance: Slow queries, table scans and unoptimized joins.
- Connection Stats: Monitors connected threads, cached threads and aborted connections.
- Memory Usage: Shows system memory, free and available memory with warnings when resources are critically low.
It’s minimalist by design, only showing the metrics database administrators care about during routine checks.
Why I’m Sharing it
So I’ve been using this script for a long while now, and I figured it could be useful for others too. Whether you’re troubleshooting an issue, monitoring server health or just learning MySQL, this script gives you a quick view of what’s going on under the hood.
The Script
You can download “MySQL Monitor” via GitHub.
Get in Touch
If you have suggestions, improvements, or even better ways to write this script, reply in the comments section below or on GitHub. I’m sure, I’m missing that one thing, or more, ha! Or, didn’t approach something the best way. I guess that’s also why I’m sharing. Keep in mind that it’s just a basic script I used to save time. It’s not anything groundbreaking. But hopefully, you find it as useful as I do.
Happy monitoring!