  We study holographic models of the QCD temperature-chemical potential phase
diagram based on the D3/D7 system with chiral symmetry breaking. The baryonic
phase may be included through linked D5-D7 systems. In a previous analysis of a
model with a running gauge coupling a baryonic phase was shown to exist to
arbitrarily large chemical potential. Here we explore this phase in a more
generic phenomenological setting with a step function dilaton profile. The
change in dilaton generates a linear confining $\bar{q}q$ potential and opposes
the screening effect of temperature. We show that the persistence of the
baryonic phase depends on the step size and that QCD-like phase diagrams can be
described. The baryonic phase's existence is qualitatively linked to the
existence of confinement in Wilson loop computations in the background.
