Databases (SQL Server)
DotDeployer installs SQL Server on Linux on your own server — never on infrastructure it owns — and it’s never exposed to the internet.
Steps:
- Open the server from Servers, go to its Databases tab.
- Create a SQL Server database and a login for it. Each site gets its own database and login, so sites on the same server never share data by accident.
- Attach the database to a site from the site’s Database tab, or create one directly from there. The connection string lands on the site’s Environment tab automatically.
Connecting from your laptop: database ports are never opened to the internet. Connect with an SSH tunnel through DotDeployer instead — the server’s Databases tab has the connect details for opening a tunnel from your own machine with SSMS, Azure Data Studio, or any other SQL Server client.
EF Core: point your DbContext at the connection string DotDeployer put in your environment
variables. Migrations run the same way they would against any SQL Server instance — there’s
nothing DotDeployer-specific about the connection.
Backups: scheduled backups run to your own S3 or DigitalOcean Spaces bucket — DotDeployer never stores a copy itself. See Backups.
No MySQL/MariaDB: DotDeployer supports PostgreSQL and SQL Server only. If your project needs MySQL, DotDeployer isn’t the right fit for that database today.
