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Version: 5.x-preview

Observability Quickstart

Experience a complete observability stack - logs, traces, and metrics - all powered by VeloDB.

Prerequisites​

  • Docker and Docker Compose installed
  • VeloDB Cloud account - Sign up free and follow the Quick Start Guide to create a warehouse
  • MySQL client - For creating the database

Finding Your VeloDB Connection Details​

After creating your warehouse in VeloDB Cloud:

  1. Go to your warehouse in the VeloDB Console
  2. Click Connection to find:
    • Host - Your cluster endpoint (e.g., xxx.velodb.io)
    • MySQL Port - Usually 9030
    • HTTP Port - Usually 8080
  3. Click Settings to get or reset your admin password

What You'll Experience​

Search Logs Like Kibana​

Discover Logs Full-text search with Lucene-like syntax, histogram visualization, and field analysis

Explore Distributed Traces​

Traces Overview See all traces across your microservices, filter by duration, service, or status

Drill Into Any Request​

Trace Waterfall Full waterfall view showing every service hop with timing breakdown

Quick Setup (5 minutes)​

1. Download​

mkdir velodb-observability && cd velodb-observability
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/velodb/velodb-tutorials/main/observability/docker-compose.yaml
info

This single file includes everything - the Grafana image has dashboards and the Doris App plugin pre-packaged.

2. Configure​

Create a .env file (copy-paste and edit):

VELODB_HOST=your-cluster.velodb.io
VELODB_USER=admin
VELODB_PASSWORD=your-password
VELODB_DATABASE=observability
VELODB_MYSQL_PORT=9030
VELODB_HTTP_PORT=8080
VELODB_TIMEZONE=America/Los_Angeles
DATA_RETENTION_DAYS=7
REPLICATION_NUM=1
warning

Set VELODB_TIMEZONE to your local timezone (America/New_York, Europe/London, Asia/Tokyo, etc.) to ensure correct time display in Grafana.

3. Create Database​

source .env && mysql -h $VELODB_HOST -P ${VELODB_MYSQL_PORT:-9030} -u $VELODB_USER -p -e "CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS $VELODB_DATABASE"

4. Start​

docker compose --profile demo up -d

This starts the demo e-commerce app with 15+ microservices plus Grafana.

5. Verify It's Working​

Wait 1-2 minutes for services to start, then check:

# Check all containers are running
docker compose --profile demo ps

# Verify data is flowing to VeloDB
docker logs otel-collector 2>&1 | grep -E "LOG|METRIC"

You should see output like:

[LOG] total 0 MB 1234 ROWS, total speed 0 MB/s 41 R/s
[METRIC] total 0 MB 567 ROWS, total speed 0 MB/s 18 R/s

Part 1: Explore the Demo Store​

Open http://localhost:8080 to see the e-commerce storefront:

OTEL Demo Store

Try these actions to generate telemetry:

  • Browse product categories
  • Add items to your cart
  • Go through checkout
  • Search for products

Every click generates logs, traces, and metrics that flow into VeloDB.

Part 2: Discover Logs​

Open http://localhost:3000 → Apps → Doris App → Discover

info

If you see "0 hits", wait 30 seconds after browsing the store for telemetry data to flow into VeloDB.

See Your Logs​

Select your database and otel_logs table. You'll see a histogram of log volume over time:

Discover Overview

Search with Full-Text Queries​

Type queries in the search bar - supports Lucene-like syntax:

Lucene Query

Try these queries:

QueryWhat it finds
severity_text:ERRORAll errors
service_name:frontendFrontend service logs
"failed to connect"Exact phrase match
status_code:[500 TO 599]Server errors
service_name:cart AND severity_text:WARNCart warnings

Filter by Clicking​

Click any field value to instantly filter:

Filter Applied

Expand Log Details​

Click any log to see all fields and surrounding context:

Expanded Log

Surrounding Logs

Switch to SQL​

Prefer SQL? Toggle to SQL mode for complex queries:

SQL Query

Find Trace IDs in Logs​

Logs and traces are connected by trace IDs. When you find an interesting log, use the trace ID to see the complete request flow across all services.

Log with Trace ID

Trace ID Field

Click the trace ID to copy it, then search for it in the Traces page (Part 3).

Part 3: Explore Traces​

Go to Apps → Doris App → Traces

View All Traces​

See every request flowing through your system:

Traces Overview

Find Slow Requests​

Filter by minimum duration to find performance issues:

Duration Filter

Sort by duration to see the slowest requests first:

Sorted by Duration

Drill Into a Trace​

Click any trace to see the full waterfall view:

Trace Waterfall

You can see:

  • Every service involved in the request
  • Time spent in each service
  • Parent-child relationships between spans
  • Error status on any span

Part 4: Explore Metrics​

Go to Dashboards → VeloDB OTEL → 1 Metrics to see pre-built metric visualizations:

Metrics Dashboard

The dashboard shows key metrics from your microservices:

  • RPS (Requests Per Second) - Request throughput for each service
  • Request Duration - Latency percentiles across services

You Did It!​

You now have a complete observability stack powered by VeloDB:

  • Logs - Searchable with full-text queries or SQL, just like Kibana
  • Traces - Distributed tracing across all your microservices
  • Metrics - Query performance metrics with SQL
  • Correlation - Jump from logs to traces with trace IDs

All your observability data lives in one place - queryable with standard SQL, with 10x storage compression and real-time ingestion.

Ready for more? Check out the Observability Overview for architecture details and production deployment guides.

Cleanup​

docker compose --profile demo down -v

Troubleshooting​

warning

"0 hits" in Grafana but data exists?

First, confirm data exists in VeloDB:

source .env && mysql -h $VELODB_HOST -P ${VELODB_MYSQL_PORT:-9030} -u $VELODB_USER -p$VELODB_PASSWORD $VELODB_DATABASE -e "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM otel_logs"

If data exists but Grafana shows "0 hits", update VELODB_TIMEZONE in .env to match your browser timezone, then restart containers.

Can't connect to VeloDB? → Verify host is reachable and ports 9030 + 8080 are open.

Collector not exporting? → Check docker logs otel-collector for connection errors.

Learn More​