Install Azure Data Studio on Red Hat (RHEL 8)

You can install Azure Data Studio on to Red Hat either via the GUI or command-line.

This article outlines both methods. I’ve included screenshots for the GUI installation.

Download Azure Data Studio

You can download the latest Azure Data Studio release from the Microsoft website.

I used Firefox in this example.

Go to the Microsoft Download page, look for the Linux options:

Screenshot of Microsoft's web page for downloading Azure Data Studio. Arrow pointing to the .rpm option.

Click the .rpm option.

You’ll be prompted to either save the file or open it:

Screenshot after clicking the .rpm option on Microsoft's website to install Azure Data Studio

Select the Save File option, then click OK.

This will download the file to your computer.

Once downloaded you should see the file listed:

Screenshot after the Azure Data Studio installation file has downloaded

Click on the file.

Install Azure Data Studio

After clicking the above file, the following screen is displayed:

Screenshot of the Install button

Click Install.

You may be prompted to authenticate:

Screenshot of the password prompt

Enter your password as required.

This installation process now begins:

Screenshot of Azure Data Studio's installation in progress

It shouldn’t take too long.

Once installed, two buttons appear; a Launch button and a Remove button:

Screenshot of the Azure Data Studio installation wizard with the Launch and Remove buttons

This means that Azure Data Studio has been successfully installed!

Open Azure Data Studio

To open Azure Data Studio, click the Launch button as shown in the previous screenshot:

Screenshot of Azure Data Studio after first launching it

To start using it, click New connection under the Start heading near the top left.

You will be prompted to set up a new connection:

Screenshot of creating a new connection in Azure Data Studio

Enter the server, user name, and password.

The following screenshot shows me logging in to my local SQL Server instance. In that case, I used localhost as the server name. I used the sa account to log in with:

Screenshot of creating a new connection in Azure Data Studio

Once you entered your details, click Connect.

This should open the connection:

Screenshot of Azure Data Studio after connecting to SQL Server

You can now go ahead and create databases, run queries, etc

Click the New Query button to open a new query tab.

You can also click the Connections icon near the top left of the screen to reveal all the connections. This allows you to navigate the servers, databases, objects, etc.

Screenshot of Azure Data Studio with a query tab open and the Connections menu open

Where Can I Find Azure Data Studio?

You can find Azure Data Studio amongst your other applications by clicking on the Show Applications icon – the nine dotted square at the bottom left of the screen:

Screenshot of the applications with Azure Data Studio highlighted

You can also filter the applications by searching for azure:

Screenshot of Azure Data Studio icon

Command-Line Installation

If you prefer to do things by the command-line, you can install Azure Data Studio by opening Terminal, and entering the following:

cd ~
yum install ./Downloads/azuredatastudio-linux-<version string>.rpm

Note that this still requires that you’ve downloaded the .rpm file from the Microsoft website as mentioned above.

You can now launch Azure Data Studio with the following command:

azuredatastudio

Depending on your setup, it’s possible that you may have missing dependencies. If so, running the following should sort this out:

yum install libXScrnSaver

Can I Install it on a Different Machine to SQL Server?

Yes. And in most cases, you probably should install Azure Data Studio on a different machine to SQL Server.

In the above example, I install Azure Data Studio on to the same machine that SQL Server is running on. You probably won’t want to do this in your production environment.

Either way, the instructions are the same regardless of whether you have SQL Server on the same machine or not. You can (and typically should) install Azure Data Studio on one machine, and then connect to SQL Server on another machine.