Yes. You can easily use a N99Panel VPS to run a MySQL server only. To use it in this way,

1. Create a system user
2. Create a MySQL DB and a MySQL User Pair
3. Grant remote access to the MySQL DB
4. Allow access to 3306 port

You can do all the above steps right from within the N99panel console

Ideally a standalone MySQL VPS should be used with another N99panel VPS instance so that they communicate on the private IP range. To setup a private IP, you would need to contact N99panel support team.

Importing a SQL file in N99panel is pretty straight forward. Our import process easily handles large SQL files  ( > 500MB ) which on most other systems or via phpMyAdmin is problematic. But in N99panel it is real easy

Broadly it involves following steps. Here we assume that you have already create a system user and a MySQL DB

1. At your local system, compress the file into a zip file (if not already done so)
2. Upload the file to the system’s user home dir via a SFTP client like FileZilla
3. Within N99panel console, go to ‘Restore an Uploaded MySQL File’ functionality and fill in the necessary details.
4. Once you submit the details, the restoration of the SQL file to the MySQL DB will begin in the background.

That it. Ideally it should work smoothly, but is some cases due to version differences of MySQL/MariaDB setup on N99panel and the source setups at where the dump file has been generated, the import process can fail.

Even when a background job is completed, under N99panel please go to ‘Tasks’, and check if any errors have been reported. Even after a deemed successful importation, please verify the table count on the restored DB. This should match with the table count in the imported SQL file.

At times, when a database is restored under N99panel, the unicode characters in certain field/columns of a table, may not handle the way you had expect it would be handled.  The primary reason for this is the difference in collation of the field/column viz-a-viz the old setup.

When a mysqldump file is generated at the source, and the collation of the table or the field/column is not explicitly defined, therefore when it is restored at N99panel, the default collation of the VPS’s MySQL/MariaDB engine applies. This leads to improper handling of certain field/column types which contain the unicode content.

In order to fix it, before proceeding with the below mentioned steps, please take a full backup of your database and also verify the same. If the concerned field/column or the table has its collation set to ‘latin1_swedish_ci’ , and also when you are totally satisfied with the backup, then only proceed with the following steps.

Here, under PHPMyAdmin, you would need to run the following command w.r.t. a field/column in a table. Please use wise discretion and due-diligence before running these commands by substituting the relevant context/keywords. Details provided further below.

/* -- */
ALTER TABLE TBLNAME ADD COLUMN new_CLMNAME longtext CHARACTER SET utf8mb4;
UPDATE TBLNAME SET new_CLMNAME = CONVERT(CAST(CLMNAME AS BINARY) USING utf8mb4);
ALTER TABLE TBLNAME RENAME COLUMN CLMNAME TO old_CLMNAME;
ALTER TABLE TBLNAME RENAME COLUMN new_CLMNAME TO CLMNAME;
/* -- */


Here,

• TBLNAME is the name of your table
• CLMNAME is the name of your field/column containing unicode data

Yes, N99panel provides phpMyAdmin whereby you can manage all aspects and operations of your databases.

We would like to add here that operations such as MySQL DB creation, MySQL user creation, MySQL DB-User mapping etc., can easily be done from N99panel console without requiring advance SQL knowledge and without using phpMyAdmin. Infact we highly recommend that you use N99panel console to manage all aspects of your MySQL administration.

When importing a MySQL DB in N99panel, via MySQL DB import functionality ( https://n99panel.com/ufaq/how-can-i-import-a-very-large-mysql-db-or-a-sql-file-into-a-n99panel-vps/ ) , and if you see any error under N99panel tasks pertaining to ‘Cannot add or update a child row: a foreign key constraint fails’ or any similar errors w.r.t. foreign key constraints failure, please do the following action.

Plase the following line

SET SESSION FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0;

as the very first line in your SQL File , and try re-importing again. This should solve the issue.