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Visualize ProxySQL Metrics with Grafana Dashboard

KubeDB exposes ProxySQL metrics through a sidecar exporter. Once Prometheus scrapes those metrics, you can visualize them in Grafana using a pre-built KubeDB dashboard. This tutorial walks through the full setup: deploying the monitoring stack, enabling monitoring on a ProxySQL instance, and importing the Grafana dashboard.

Before You Begin

• You need a Kubernetes cluster with kubectl configured. If you do not already have a cluster, you can create one by using kind.

• KubeDB must be installed in your cluster with kubedb-metrics enabled. Follow the setup guide here and make sure to include the flag below during installation:

  --set kubedb-metrics.enabled=true
  

  kubedb-metrics creates MetricsConfiguration objects for each database type, which Panopticon (Step 2) uses to expose metrics to Prometheus.

• To keep monitoring resources isolated, we use a separate monitoring namespace and deploy the database in the demo namespace.

  $ kubectl create ns monitoring
  namespace/monitoring created
  
  $ kubectl create ns demo
  namespace/demo created
  

Note: YAML files used in this tutorial are stored in docs/examples/proxysql/monitoring folder in GitHub repository kubedb/docs.

Configuration

These two steps — deploying kube-prometheus-stack and installing Panopticon — are shared prerequisites for all KubeDB database monitoring guides. If you have already completed them in another guide, skip to Step 1.

Step 1: Deploy kube-prometheus-stack

kube-prometheus-stack installs Prometheus, Prometheus Operator, Alertmanager, and Grafana together. This is the recommended way to get the full monitoring stack on Kubernetes.

Add the prometheus-community Helm repo and install:

$ helm repo add prometheus-community https://prometheus-community.github.io/helm-charts
$ helm repo update

$ helm upgrade --install prometheus prometheus-community/kube-prometheus-stack \
  --namespace monitoring \
  --set grafana.image.tag=7.5.5

Wait for all pods to be ready:

$ kubectl get pods -n monitoring
NAME                                                   READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
alertmanager-prometheus-kube-prometheus-alertmanager-0 2/2     Running   0          2m
prometheus-grafana-xxxx                                3/3     Running   0          2m
prometheus-kube-prometheus-operator-xxxx               1/1     Running   0          2m
prometheus-kube-prometheus-prometheus-0                2/2     Running   0          2m
prometheus-kube-state-metrics-xxxx                     1/1     Running   0          2m

Find the serviceMonitorSelector label that Prometheus uses to pick up ServiceMonitor objects. You will need this label when enabling monitoring on the ProxySQL instance.

$ kubectl get prometheus -n monitoring -o jsonpath='{.items[0].spec.serviceMonitorSelector}'
{"matchLabels":{"release":"prometheus"}}

The label is release: prometheus.

Step 2: Install Panopticon

Panopticon is the Appscode operator that reads MetricsConfiguration objects created by kubedb-metrics and exposes them to Prometheus. It must be installed before enabling kubedb-metrics.

$ helm repo add appscode https://charts.appscode.com/stable/
$ helm repo update

$ helm upgrade --install panopticon appscode/panopticon \
  --version v2026.4.30 \
  --namespace kubeops --create-namespace \
  --set monitoring.enabled=true \
  --set monitoring.agent=prometheus.io/operator \
  --set monitoring.serviceMonitor.labels.release=prometheus \
  --set-file license=/path/to/kubedb-license.txt \
  --wait --timeout 5m0s

Verify panopticon is running:

$ kubectl get pods -n kubeops
NAME                          READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
panopticon-xxxx               1/1     Running   0          1m

Setup

Step 1: Deploy ProxySQL with Monitoring Enabled

ProxySQL requires a backend MySQL cluster. The example below assumes a MySQL cluster named mysql-server already exists in the demo namespace. Below is the ProxySQL object with monitoring configured to use Prometheus Operator.

apiVersion: kubedb.com/v1
kind: ProxySQL
metadata:
  name: proxysql-grafana-demo
  namespace: demo
spec:
  version: "2.4.4-debian"
  replicas: 1
  backend:
    name: mysql-server
  deletionPolicy: WipeOut
  monitor:
    agent: prometheus.io/operator
    prometheus:
      serviceMonitor:
        labels:
          release: prometheus
        interval: 10s

Here,

• monitor.agent: prometheus.io/operator tells KubeDB to create a ServiceMonitor for this instance.
• monitor.prometheus.serviceMonitor.labels must match the serviceMonitorSelector label of your Prometheus (release: prometheus).
• monitor.prometheus.serviceMonitor.interval sets the scrape interval to 10 seconds.

Create the ProxySQL instance:

$ kubectl create -f https://github.com/kubedb/docs/raw/v2026.6.19/docs/examples/proxysql/monitoring/coreos-prom-proxysql.yaml
proxysql.kubedb.com/proxysql-grafana-demo created

Wait for it to be Ready:

$ kubectl get proxysql -n demo proxysql-grafana-demo
NAME                    VERSION        STATUS   AGE
proxysql-grafana-demo   2.4.4-debian   Ready    2m

KubeDB creates a stats service named {proxysql-name}-stats for the exporter:

$ kubectl get svc -n demo --selector="app.kubernetes.io/instance=proxysql-grafana-demo"
NAME                          TYPE        CLUSTER-IP     EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)     AGE
proxysql-grafana-demo         ClusterIP   10.96.10.1     <none>        6033/TCP    2m
proxysql-grafana-demo-stats   ClusterIP   10.96.10.2     <none>        6070/TCP    2m

KubeDB also creates a ServiceMonitor in the demo namespace:

$ kubectl get servicemonitor -n demo
NAME                          AGE
proxysql-grafana-demo-stats   2m

Verify it carries the correct label:

$ kubectl get servicemonitor -n demo proxysql-grafana-demo-stats -o jsonpath='{.metadata.labels}'
{"release":"prometheus", ...}

Step 2: Verify Prometheus is Scraping

Port-forward the Prometheus pod:

$ kubectl port-forward -n monitoring \
  prometheus-prometheus-kube-prometheus-prometheus-0 9090
Forwarding from 127.0.0.1:9090 -> 9090
Forwarding from [::1]:9090 -> 9090

Open http://localhost:9090/targets in your browser. Look for an entry whose service label matches proxysql-grafana-demo-stats. Its state should be UP.

If the target is missing, check that the ServiceMonitor label (release: prometheus) matches the Prometheus serviceMonitorSelector.

Step 3: Access Grafana

Port-forward the Grafana service:

$ kubectl port-forward -n monitoring svc/prometheus-grafana 3000:80
Forwarding from 127.0.0.1:3000 -> 80

Open http://localhost:3000. The username is admin. Retrieve the auto-generated password from the secret:

$ kubectl get secret -n monitoring prometheus-grafana \
  -o jsonpath='{.data.admin-password}' | base64 -d

After a successful login you will see the Grafana home page:

Step 4: Configure Prometheus as a Data Source

If you installed Grafana via kube-prometheus-stack, Prometheus is already configured as the default data source — skip to Step 5.

For a standalone Grafana installation:

1. Go to Connections → Data sources → Add new data source.

2. Select Prometheus.

3. Set the URL to your Prometheus service:

   http://prometheus-operated.monitoring.svc:9090
   

4. Click Save & test. You should see Data source is working.

Step 5: Import KubeDB ProxySQL Dashboard

The KubeDB ProxySQL dashboards are distributed as JSON files. Each JSON file is a complete dashboard definition — panels, queries, variables, and layout — that Grafana loads in one shot. Without importing, you would have to build every panel and write every PromQL query by hand. Importing lets you skip that entirely.

Three dashboards are available. Download all three JSON files from the appscode/grafana-dashboards repository (proxysql/ folder):

Import steps (repeat for each of the three files):

1. In Grafana, click the + icon in the left sidebar.
2. Select Import from the menu.
3. Click Upload JSON file and select one of the downloaded .json files.
4. In the Prometheus dropdown that appears, select your Prometheus data source.
5. Click Import.

The import page looks like this — click Upload dashboard JSON file to select the file:

After importing all three files, they will appear under Dashboards in the left sidebar.

Step 6: Explore the Dashboard

After opening a dashboard, use the dropdown filters at the top to focus on a specific instance.

KubeDB / ProxySQL / Summary — start here for an instance overview:

• General Info — database status, version, backend server, frontend SSL, total nodes, termination policy
• Resource Requests / Limits — configured CPU and memory requests and limits
• CPU Info / CPU Quota — per-pod CPU usage over time and quota utilization
• Memory Info — memory usage over time

KubeDB / ProxySQL / Pod — drill into a specific proxy pod:

• MySQL Pod Summary — pod name, version, and ProxySQL uptime
• Pod CPU, Memory and File Descriptor Stats — per-pod CPU and memory usage
• Connections — ProxySQL connections and aborted connections
• Temporary Objects & Slow Queries — slow query rate on this pod

KubeDB / ProxySQL / Database — per-pod service and network metrics:

• Service Status / Uptime — per-pod health and how long each pod has been serving
• Proxy Network — ProxySQL connections and network received vs. sent per pod
• ProxySQL Slow Queries / Aborted Connections — per-pod query and connection error rates

Cleaning up

# Remove the ProxySQL instance
kubectl delete proxysql -n demo proxysql-grafana-demo

# Remove namespaces
kubectl delete ns demo

# Uninstall monitoring stack (optional)
helm uninstall prometheus -n monitoring
helm uninstall panopticon -n kubeops
kubectl delete ns monitoring kubeops

Next Steps

• Monitor your ProxySQL instance with KubeDB using built-in Prometheus.
• Monitor your ProxySQL instance with KubeDB using Prometheus Operator.
• Want to hack on KubeDB? Check our contribution guidelines.