For those coming from a Unix-like environment (Mac OS/X, Linux, FreeBSD, etc), the ssh(1)/sftp(1) commands provided with the operating system is all you need.

Simply connect to staging.pghost.online with your assigned username/password and you're ready to start migrating your data to our service. Your staging username/password will be the same as your PostgreSQL database name/password. For instance, if your username is "bob," then your database username will also be "bob." Both your staging password, and your PostgreSQL password, can be changed at any time.

Acceptable Use Policy:
The staging server is shared by multiple users; therefore, it's of great importance that everyone plays nice. If you're looking for a basic shell account for email, personal web space, etc.; let us recommend SDF.

You may not attempt to undermine the security of the staging host or any of our infrastructure.
You may not receive email with this access. The staging server is for migrating/manipulating data; not for reading email.
You may not IRC from the staging host. Again, IRC from your own computer.
You may not run any kind of proxy/bouncer. This goes back to undermining our security.

Any attempt to compromise the security of the PgHost.online infrastructure will result in immediate termination of your account. There will be no refunds. If you repeatedly violate these rules, your account will be terminated.

Data Management:
The staging server is an Ubuntu Linux 24.04.01 system. As such, it comes loaded with tools to help you migrate, manage, and query your data. To this end, we've included:

• a C compiler (with libpq-dev et al)
• Perl 5.38 (with DBI, DBD::Pg, DBD::MySQL, etc)
• PHP 8.3.6 (with support for PostgreSQL)
• Python 3.12.3 (with psycopg2)
• NodeJS v18.19.1 (with node-pg, express, et al)

Backups:
A daily backup of your database will be taken, stored in /opt/pgsql/backups/dbname.sql.gz, which can be accessed from the staging host. Unix file permissions ensure that you are the only user on the system that can access the backup of your database. The standard PostgreSQL pg_dump(1)/pg_restore(1) utilities are provided.

Scheduled Jobs:
You can also schedule jobs to run against the database on this host, using cron(8) or pgaent(1). This can simplify generating daily reports and database clean-up.

We've provided tools to help you migrate your data from MS SQL Server, Oracle, and MySQL. To a lesser degree, migrating data from a MongoDB instance is supported.