# pt-heartbeat database connections

**URL:** <https://forums.percona.com/t/pt-heartbeat-database-connections/2985>\
**Category:** Percona Toolkit\
**Created:** [October 4, 2013, 2:51pm UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/pt-heartbeat-database-connections/2985 "2013-10-04T14:51:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![MikeTitus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3d9bf3/32.png) [@MikeTitus](https://forums.percona.com/u/MikeTitus)\
**Post date:** [October 4, 2013, 2:51pm UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/pt-heartbeat-database-connections/2985/1 "2013-10-04T14:51:17Z")

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Does pt-heartbeat (in either --update or --monitor mode) hold a single, long-lived connection to the database, or does it connect and then drop the connection at each check interval? Thanks.

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**Author:** ![niljoshi](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forums.percona.com/niljoshi/32/16889_2.png) [@niljoshi](https://forums.percona.com/u/niljoshi)\
**Post date:** [October 16, 2013, 2:29am UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/pt-heartbeat-database-connections/2985/2 "2013-10-16T02:29:58Z")

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Hi, you can use interval option to control when you want to check /update. Please see more details here.  
[URL][pt-heartbeat — Percona Toolkit Documentation](http://www.percona.com/doc/percona-toolkit/2.1/pt-heartbeat.html#cmdoption-pt-heartbeat--interval%5B/URL%5D)