Data Stores and Persistence

Duende IdentityServer is backed by two kinds of data:

• Configuration Data: clients, resources, and identity providers.
• Operational Data: tokens, authorization codes, grants, and sessions.

Data access is abstracted by store interfaces registered in the ASP.NET Core service provider. These interfaces allow IdentityServer to access the data it needs at runtime when processing requests. You can implement these interfaces yourself to use any database, or choose one of the built-in providers.

Note

Given that data stores abstract the details of the data stored, strictly speaking, IdentityServer does not know or understand where the data is actually being stored. As such, there is no built-in administrative tool to populate or manage this data.

There are third-party options (both commercial and FOSS) that provide an administrative UI for managing the data when using the EntityFramework Core implementations. See Admin UI for details.

Configuration DataClients, resources, and identity providers: the static configuration that defines what your IdentityServer supports.

Operational DataTokens, authorization codes, grants, and sessions: the runtime data IdentityServer generates during authentication flows.

Storage ProvidersChoose how and where your data is stored: Entity Framework Core, in-memory, or a custom implementation.