MySQL Monitoring with Vigilmon: External Health Checks for Your Database

MySQL powers everything from small WordPress sites to large-scale web applications. When MySQL becomes unreachable, your application breaks immediately. Vigilmon monitors your MySQL-backed services externally by checking a health endpoint that proves database connectivity.

The Pattern: Health Endpoint as Database Probe

Your application already connects to MySQL. A /health endpoint that runs a lightweight query becomes your database heartbeat — and Vigilmon checks it from multiple regions continuously.

Building the Health Endpoint

Node.js + mysql2

const mysql = require('mysql2/promise');
const pool = mysql.createPool({ connectionString: process.env.DATABASE_URL });

app.get('/health', async (req, res) => {
  try {
    await pool.query('SELECT 1');
    res.json({ status: 'ok', database: 'mysql', connected: true });
  } catch (error) {
    res.status(503).json({ status: 'error', message: error.message });
  }
});

PHP / Laravel

Route::get('/health', function () {
    try {
        DB::connection()->getPdo();
        return response()->json(['status' => 'ok', 'database' => config('database.default')]);
    } catch (Exception $e) {
        return response()->json(['status' => 'error', 'message' => 'Database unavailable'], 503);
    }
});

WordPress (PHP)

add_action('init', function() {
    if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] === '/health') {
        global $wpdb;
        $result = $wpdb->get_var('SELECT 1');
        $status = $result ? 'ok' : 'error';
        $code = $result ? 200 : 503;
        wp_send_json(['status' => $status], $code);
        exit;
    }
});

Python + PyMySQL

import pymysql, os

@app.get("/health")
async def health():
    try:
        conn = pymysql.connect(
            host=os.getenv("DB_HOST"),
            user=os.getenv("DB_USER"),
            password=os.getenv("DB_PASSWORD"),
            database=os.getenv("DB_NAME"),
            connect_timeout=3
        )
        conn.close()
        return {"status": "ok", "database": "mysql"}
    except Exception as e:
        raise HTTPException(status_code=503, detail=str(e))

Configuring Vigilmon

1. Log in to vigilmon.online
2. Click Add Monitor
3. Enter: https://yourapp.com/health
4. Enable keyword assertion: ok
5. Set response time alert threshold: 2000ms

Common MySQL Failures Vigilmon Detects

Failure	How Vigilmon Catches It
MySQL server crash	Health endpoint returns 503
Connection pool exhausted	Response time spikes, then 503
Wrong password after rotation	Health endpoint returns 503
Network partition	Health endpoint times out
Disk full	Queries fail, returns 503

Multi-Region Coverage

Vigilmon checks from multiple geographic regions. An alert fires only when a majority agree the endpoint is failing — no false positives from transient network issues.

Free Tier

5 monitors, 5-minute intervals, email alerts, no credit card required.

Start monitoring your MySQL-backed application at vigilmon.online.