Persistent logging

In a distributed Kubernetes environment, it is often difficult to debug issues because logs are tied to the lifecycle of individual Pods and containers. If a Pod fails and restarts, its logs are lost, making it hard to identify the root cause.

Percona Operator for MySQL addresses this challenge with persistent logging, ensuring logs are stored independently of Pod lifecycle. This approach keeps logs available for review even after a Pod restarts.

The Operator collects logs using Fluent Bit , a lightweight log processor with versatile output plugins and forwarding features. Fluent Bit runs as a logs sidecar container alongside each database Pod. It collects database logs and writes them to the DATADIR (/var/lib/mysql/) on the same Persistent Volume used by the corresponding Percona XtraDB Cluster Pod. As a result, logs persist across Pod restarts and remain available for later debugging.

Logs are stored for 7 days and then rotated.

To view collected logs, use the following command:

kubectl logs cluster1-pxc-0 -c logs -n <namespace>

Configure log collector

Log collection is enabled by default and is controlled by the logcollector.enabled key in the deploy/cr.yaml configuration file.

If needed, you can configure Fluent Bit filtering and advanced features through the logcollector.configuration key in the deploy/cr.yaml file.

Note that when you add a new configuration to the logcollector.configuration, this triggers a rolling restart of the Pods.

Fluent Bit credentials and similar data for output plugins are stored in a separate Secret. The Secret name is set by the logCollectorSecretName option in the deploy/cr.yaml Custom Resource (my-log-collector-secrets by default).

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Last update: April 30, 2026
Created: April 30, 2026