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Connecting Bitbucket Server to SQL Server

Connecting Bitbucket Server to an external database

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This page describes how to connect Bitbucket Data Center and Server to a Microsoft SQL Server database. You can connect Bitbucket to a SQL server either at install time using the Setup Wizard, or later using the Using the Database Migration Wizard. These instructions assume that you already have SQL Server installed and running.

The overall process for using a SQL Server database with Bitbucket is:

  • install SQL Server where it is accessible to Bitbucket
  • create a database and user on the SQL Server instance for Bitbucket to use
  • install Bitbucket on Windows, or on Linux or Mac. See the Bitbucket Server installation guide

See Supported platforms for the versions of SQL Server supported by Bitbucket.

Prerequisites

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Related pages:

Back up your current database

If you are migrating your data from the internal Bitbucket database, back up the home directory.

If you are migrating your Bitbucket data from a different external database, back up that database by following the instructions provided by the database vendor before proceeding with these instructions.

See Data recovery and backups.

Create the Bitbucket database

Before you can use Bitbucket with SQL Server, you must set up SQL Server as follows:

StepNotes
Create a databasee.g. bitbucket. Remember this database name for the connection step below.
Set the collation typeThis should be case-sensitive, for example, 'SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AS' (CS = Case Sensitive).
Set the isolation levelConfigure the database to use the isolation level, Read Committed with Row Versioning.
Create a database user

e.g. bitbucketuser. This database user should not be the database owner, but should be in the db_owner role. It needs to be in this role during setup and at all points when Bitbucket is running due to the way it interacts with the database. See SQL Server Startup Errors. Remember this database user name for the connection step below.

Set database user permissions

The Bitbucket database user has permission to connect to the database, and to create and drop tables, indexes and other constraints, and insert and delete data, in the newly-created database.

Enable TCP/IPEnsure that TCP/IP is enabled on SQL Server and that SQL Server is listening on the correct port (which is 1433 for a default SQL Server installation). Remember this port number for the connection step below.
Check the authentication mode

Ensure that SQL Server is operating in the appropriate authentication mode. By default, SQL Server operates in 'Windows Authentication Mode'. However, if your user is not associated with a trusted SQL connection, 'Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 18452' is received during Bitbucket startup, and you will need to change the authentication mode to 'Mixed Authentication Mode'.

Bitbucket instances running on Windows are also able to support SQL Server databases running in 'Windows Authentication Mode'. This is described at the bottom of this page and it has to be manually configured: Use Integrated Authentication (Optional)

Check that SET NOCOUNT is offEnsure that the SET NOCOUNT option is turned off. You can do that in SQL Server Management Studio as follows:
  1. Navigate to Tools > Options > Query Execution > SQL Server > Advanced. Ensure that the SET NOCOUNT option is cleared.
  2. Now, go to the Server > Properties > Connections > Default Connections properties box and clear the no count option.

Note that Bitbucket will generally require about 25–30 connections to the database.

Note also that Bitbucket requires the database to keep idle connections alive for at least 10 minutes. If the database is configured with less than a 10 minute connection timeout, there will be seemingly random connection errors. 

Here is an example of how to create and configure the SQL Server database from the command line. When Bitbucket and SQL Server run on the same physical computer (accessible through localhost), run the following commands (replacing bitbucketuser and password with your own values):

SQL Server> CREATE DATABASE bitbucket
SQL Server> GO
SQL Server> USE bitbucket
SQL Server> GO
SQL Server> ALTER DATABASE bitbucket SET ALLOW_SNAPSHOT_ISOLATION ON
SQL Server> GO
SQL Server> ALTER DATABASE bitbucket SET READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT ON
SQL Server> GO
SQL Server> ALTER DATABASE bitbucket COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AS
SQL Server> GO
SQL Server> SET NOCOUNT OFF
SQL Server> GO
SQL Server> USE master
SQL Server> GO
SQL Server> CREATE LOGIN bitbucketuser WITH PASSWORD=N'password', DEFAULT_DATABASE=bitbucket, CHECK_EXPIRATION=OFF, CHECK_POLICY=OFF
SQL Server> GO
SQL Server> ALTER AUTHORIZATION ON DATABASE::bitbucket TO bitbucketuser
SQL Server> GO

This creates an empty SQL Server database with the name bitbucket, and a user that can log in from the host that Bitbucket is running on who has full access to the newly created database. In particular, the user should be allowed to create and drop tables, indexes and other constraints.

Connect Bitbucket to the SQL Server database

You can now connect Bitbucket to the SQL Server database, either:

  • when you run the Setup Wizard, at install time,
  • when you wish to migrate to SQL Server, either from the embedded database or from another external database.

When running the Setup Wizard at install time

  1. Select External at the 'Database' step.
  2. Select SQL Server for Database Type.
  3. Complete the form. See the table below for details.
  4. Click Next, and follow the instructions in the Bitbucket Setup Wizard.

When migrating to SQL Server

  1. In the Bitbucket administration area, click Database (under 'Settings').
  2. Click Migrate database.
  3. Select SQL Server for Database Type.
  4. Complete the form. See the table below for details.
  5. Click Start Migration.


Hostname

The hostname or IP address of the computer running the database server.

Port

The TCP port with which Bitbucket can connect to the database server. The default value of 1433 is the default port that SQL Server runs against. You can change that if you know the port that your SQL Server instance is using.

Database name

The name of the database that Bitbucket should connect to.

Database username

The username that Bitbucket should use to access the database.

Database password

The password that Bitbucket should use to access the database.

Named Instances

If you have a named instance on your server, you will need to manually edit the bitbucket.properties file as described on the Connecting to named instances in SQL Server from Bitbucket Server Knowledge Base article.

Use Integrated Authentication or 'Windows Authentication Mode' (Optional)

Windows authentication is only available for Bitbucket instances running on Windows. It cannot be used on Linux because Microsoft does not provide shared objects for it. You will either need to run Bitbucket on Windows, allowing you to use Windows security, or you will need to enable mixed-mode authentication for SQL Server if you are running Bitbucket on Linux. Unfortunately, there are no other options at this time.

Integrated authentication uses a native DLL to access the credentials of the logged-in user to authenticate with SQL Server. The native DLLs for both 32- and 64-bit systems are included in the distribution; there is no need to download the entire package from Microsoft.

Bitbucket does not currently support configuring the system to use integrated authentication from the UI (Vote for it! STASH-3035 - Getting issue details... STATUS ). This means you can't currently migrate to SQL Server with integrated authentication, nor can you configure Bitbucket to use SQL Server with integrated authentication during initial setup. However, if Bitbucket has already been configured to use SQL Server (for example, when the Setup Wizard was run at first use), you can enable integrated authentication by directly modifying Bitbucket's configuration, as follows:

  1. Based on the JVM being used to run Bitbucket, rename either the x64 or x86 DLL to sqljdbc_auth.dll in lib/native. Note that running on Windows x64 does not require the use of the x64 DLL; you should only use the x64 DLL if you are also using a 64-bit JVM.
  2. In _start-webapp.bat, a JVM_LIBRARY_PATH variable has already been defined. Simply remove the leading rem . Note that if you are putting the native DLL in an alternative location, you may need to change the value to point to your own path. The value of the JVM_LIBRARY_PATH variable will automatically be included in the command line when Tomcat is run using start-bitbucket.bat.
  3. Edit the %BITBUCKET_HOME%\shared\bitbucket.properties file to include ;integratedSecurity=true in the jdbc.url line. Note that jdbc.user and jdbc.password will no longer be used to supply credentials but they must still be defined – Bitbucket will fail to start if these properties are removed.
  4. Ensure the Bitbucket process or service is running as the correct user to access SQL Server.  (Note that this user is generally a Windows Domain User Account, but should not be a member of any administrators groups, that is local, domain, or enterprise.)

It is also possible to configure integrated authentication over Kerberos, rather than using the native DLLs. Details for that are included in the JDBC documentation.

Install the JDBC driver

This section is only relevant to some distributions of Bitbucket, for example if you are running Bitbucket via the Atlassian Plugin SDK, or have built Bitbucket from source.

If the SQL Server JDBC driver is not bundled with Bitbucket, you will need to download and install the driver yourself.

  1. Download the appropriate JDBC driver from the Microsoft download site.
  2. Install the driver file to your <Bitbucket home directory> /lib directory (for Bitbucket 2.1 or later).
  3. Stop, then restart, Bitbucket. See Starting and stopping Bitbucket Server.

If Bitbucket was configured to use Microsoft SQL Server by manually entering a JDBC URL, please refer to this guide.

Last modified on Feb 25, 2021

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