Quickstart

Get Basira monitoring your database in three steps: create an account, register your database, and deploy the agent.

1. Create an Account

Email address
Password (minimum 8 characters)
Your name and organization name

After signing up, verify your email to unlock all features. Unverified accounts are limited to one database and 24 hours of data retention.

2. Register a Database and Get an API Key

After logging in, the onboarding wizard walks you through:

Generate an API key — copy it now, the full key is only shown once
Register your database — provide the host, port, engine (PostgreSQL or ClickHouse), and a name

You can also manage API keys later from Settings > API Keys.

3. Prepare Your Database

Create a dedicated monitoring user with read-only access:

PostgreSQL Setup — create user, enable pg_stat_statements
ClickHouse Setup — create user, verify query_log

4. Deploy the Agent

The Basira agent runs near your database, collects telemetry, and ships it to the API.

Important: Use a direct instance endpoint for the DSN — not a cluster, load-balancer, or proxy endpoint. The agent needs a stable connection to one physical database. See Agent Configuration for details.

With Helm (Kubernetes)

# values.yaml
apiKey: "dbm_ak_your_api_key"
apiEndpoint: "https://api.usebasira.com"
databases:
  - name: primary-pg
    dsn: postgres://basira_monitor:password@pg-host:5432/mydb?sslmode=require

helm install basira-agent oci://ghcr.io/usebasira/charts/basira-agent \
  -f values.yaml

Without Kubernetes

Create a config.yaml and run the agent binary directly:

api:
  endpoint: https://api.usebasira.com
  key: dbm_ak_your_api_key

databases:
  - name: primary-pg
    dsn: postgres://basira_monitor:password@pg-host:5432/mydb?sslmode=require

BASIRA_CONFIG=config.yaml ./basira-agent

See Agent Installation and Agent Configuration for full details.

5. Verify

Within 30 seconds of the agent starting, your database should appear in the Basira dashboard with live telemetry. Check:

Dashboard — health score and key metrics
Queries — top queries by total time
Active — currently running sessions

If the database doesn't appear, check agent logs and see Troubleshooting.