sending empty heartbeat

[Nobuaki Ito]

I currently administrate a mysql ETL pipeline in which mysql master database is replicated to a cloud based infrastructure.

Most databases that I mange have periodical update so that the monitoring replication is simple : MASTER_HEARTBEAT_PERIOD is set in such a way that the integrity (completeness) of updates can be monitored by the number of heartbeat sent by the master VS the updates performed on the cloud infrastructure.

However, there exist one database that has sparse updates, which causes unnecessary alerts on our monitoring system. I am receiving false alerts because the monitoring system misunderstands the lack of heartbeat as some data pipeline failure.

Is there any way to enforce the master to send out heartbeat, ideally empty heartbeat to let know that the master is functional? This would also help me to monitor the health of the ETL pipeline as well.

Thanks,