# Administrator documentation

Learn how to administer your GitLab instance (Community Edition and
[Enterprise Editions](https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-ee/)).
Regular users don't have access to GitLab administration tools and settings.

GitLab.com is administered by GitLab, Inc., therefore, only GitLab team members have
access to its admin configurations. If you're a GitLab.com user, please check the
[user documentation](../user/index.html).

## Installing and maintaining GitLab

Learn how to install, configure, update, and maintain your GitLab instance.

### Installing GitLab

- [Install](../install/README.md): Requirements, directory structures, and installation methods.
- [High Availability](high_availability/README.md): Configure multiple servers for scaling or high availability.

### Configuring GitLab

- [Adjust your instance's timezone](../workflow/timezone.md): Customize the default time zone of GitLab.
- [Header logo](../customization/branded_page_and_email_header.md): Change the logo on all pages and email headers.
- [Welcome message](../customization/welcome_message.md): Add a custom welcome message to the sign-in page.
- [System hooks](../system_hooks/system_hooks.md): Notifications when users, projects and keys are changed.
- [Security](../security/README.md): Learn what you can do to further secure your GitLab instance.
- [Usage statistics, version check, and usage ping](../user/admin_area/settings/usage_statistics.md): Enable or disable information about your instance to be sent to GitLab, Inc.
- [Polling](polling.md): Configure how often the GitLab UI polls for updates.
- [GitLab Pages configuration](pages/index.md): Enable and configure GitLab Pages.
- [GitLab Pages configuration for installations from the source](pages/source.md): Enable and configure GitLab Pages on
[source installations](../install/installation.md#installation-from-source).
- [Environment variables](environment_variables.md): Supported environment variables that can be used to override their defaults values in order to configure GitLab.

### Maintaining GitLab

- [Raketasks](../raketasks/README.md): Perform various tasks for maintenance, backups, automatic webhooks setup, etc.
  - [Backup and restore](../raketasks/backup_restore.md): Backup and restore your GitLab instance.
- [Operations](operations.md): Keeping GitLab up and running (clean up Redis sessions, moving repositories, Sidekiq Job throttling, Sidekiq MemoryKiller, Unicorn).
- [Restart GitLab](restart_gitlab.md): Learn how to restart GitLab and its components.

#### Updating GitLab

- [GitLab versions and maintenance policy](../policy/maintenance.md): Understand GitLab versions and releases (Major, Minor, Patch, Security), as well as update recommendations.
- [Update GitLab](../update/README.md): Update guides to upgrade your installation to a new version.
- [Downtimeless updates](../update/README.md#upgrading-without-downtime): Upgrade to a newer major, minor, or patch version of GitLab without taking your GitLab instance offline.
- [Migrate your GitLab CI/CD data to another version of GitLab](../migrate_ci_to_ce/README.md): If you have an old GitLab installation (older than 8.0), follow this guide to migrate your existing GitLab CI/CD data to another version of GitLab.

### Upgrading or downgrading GitLab

- [Upgrade from GitLab CE to GitLab EE](../update/README.md#upgrading-between-editions): learn how to upgrade GitLab Community Edition to GitLab Enterprise Editions.
- [Downgrade from GitLab EE to GitLab CE](../downgrade_ee_to_ce/README.md): Learn how to downgrade GitLab Enterprise Editions to Community Edition.

### GitLab platform integrations

- [Mattermost](https://docs.gitlab.com/omnibus/gitlab-mattermost/): Integrate with [Mattermost](https://about.mattermost.com/), an open source, private cloud workplace for web messaging.
- [PlantUML](integration/plantuml.md): Create simple diagrams in AsciiDoc and Markdown documents
created in snippets, wikis, and repos.
- [Web terminals](integration/terminal.md): Provide terminal access to your applications deployed to Kubernetes from within GitLab's CI/CD [environments](../ci/environments.md#web-terminals).

## User settings and permissions

- [Libravatar](../customization/libravatar.md): Use Libravatar instead of Gravatar for user avatars.
- [Sign-up restrictions](../user/admin_area/settings/sign_up_restrictions.md): block email addresses of specific domains, or whitelist only specific domains.
- [Access restrictions](../user/admin_area/settings/visibility_and_access_controls.md#enabled-git-access-protocols): Define which Git access protocols can be used to talk to GitLab (SSH, HTTP, HTTPS).
- [Authentication/Authorization](../topics/authentication/index.md#gitlab-administrators): Enforce 2FA, configure external authentication with LDAP, SAML, CAS and additional Omniauth providers.
- [Reply by email](reply_by_email.md): Allow users to comment on issues and merge requests by replying to notification emails.
  - [Postfix for Reply by email](reply_by_email_postfix_setup.md): Set up a basic Postfix mail
server with IMAP authentication on Ubuntu, to be used with Reply by email.
- [User Cohorts](../user/admin_area/user_cohorts.md): Display the monthly cohorts of new users and their activities over time.

## Project settings

- [Container Registry](container_registry.md): Configure Container Registry with GitLab.
- [Issue closing pattern](issue_closing_pattern.md): Customize how to close an issue from commit messages.
- [Gitaly](gitaly/index.md): Configuring Gitaly, GitLab's Git repository storage service.
- [Default labels](../user/admin_area/labels.html): Create labels that will be automatically added to every new project.

### Repository settings

- [Repository checks](repository_checks.md): Periodic Git repository checks.
- [Repository storage paths](repository_storage_paths.md): Manage the paths used to store repositories.
- [Repository storage rake tasks](raketasks/storage.md): A collection of rake tasks to list and migrate existing projects and attachments associated with it from Legacy storage to Hashed storage.

## Continuous Integration settings

- [Enable/disable GitLab CI/CD](../ci/enable_or_disable_ci.md#site-wide-admin-setting): Enable or disable GitLab CI/CD for your instance.
- [GitLab CI/CD admin settings](../user/admin_area/settings/continuous_integration.md): Define max artifacts size and expiration time.
- [Job artifacts](job_artifacts.md): Enable, disable, and configure job artifacts (a set of files and directories which are outputted by a job when it completes successfully).
- [Artifacts size and expiration](../user/admin_area/settings/continuous_integration.md#maximum-artifacts-size): Define maximum artifacts limits and expiration date.
- [Register Shared and specific Runners](../ci/runners/README.md#registering-a-shared-runner): Learn how to register and configure Shared and specific Runners to your own instance.
- [Shared Runners pipelines quota](../user/admin_area/settings/continuous_integration.md#shared-runners-pipeline-minutes-quota): Limit the usage of pipeline minutes for Shared Runners.
- [Enable/disable Auto DevOps](../topics/autodevops/index.md#enabling-auto-devops): Enable or disable Auto DevOps for your instance.

## Git configuration options

- [Custom Git hooks](custom_hooks.md): Custom Git hooks (on the filesystem) for when webhooks aren't enough.
- [Git LFS configuration](../workflow/lfs/lfs_administration.md): Learn how to configure LFS for GitLab.
- [Housekeeping](housekeeping.md): Keep your Git repositories tidy and fast.

## Monitoring GitLab

- [Monitoring uptime](../user/admin_area/monitoring/health_check.md): Check the server status using the health check endpoint.
  - [IP whitelist](monitoring/ip_whitelist.md): Monitor endpoints that provide health check information when probed.
- [Monitoring GitHub imports](monitoring/github_imports.md): GitLab's GitHub Importer displays Prometheus metrics to monitor the health and progress of the importer.
- [Conversational Development (ConvDev) Index](../user/admin_area/monitoring/convdev.md): Provides an overview of your entire instance's feature usage.

### Performance Monitoring

- [GitLab Performance Monitoring](monitoring/performance/gitlab_configuration.md): Enable GitLab Performance Monitoring.
- [GitLab performance monitoring with InfluxDB](monitoring/performance/introduction.md): Configure GitLab and InfluxDB for measuring performance metrics.
  - [InfluxDB Schema](monitoring/performance/influxdb_schema.md): Measurements stored in InfluxDB.
- [GitLab performance monitoring with Prometheus](monitoring/prometheus/index.md): Configure GitLab and Prometheus for measuring performance metrics.
- [GitLab performance monitoring with Grafana](monitoring/prometheus/index.md): Configure GitLab to visualize time series metrics through graphs and dashboards.
- [Request Profiling](monitoring/performance/request_profiling.md): Get a detailed profile on slow requests.
- [Performance Bar](monitoring/performance/performance_bar.md): Get performance information for the current page.

## Troubleshooting

- [Debugging tips](troubleshooting/debug.md): Tips to debug problems when things go wrong
- [Log system](logs.md): Where to look for logs.
- [Sidekiq Troubleshooting](troubleshooting/sidekiq.md): Debug when Sidekiq appears hung and is not processing jobs.