---
stage: Enablement
group: Distribution
info: "To determine the technical writer assigned to the Stage/Group associated with this page, see https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/ux/technical-writing/#assignments"
description: 'Learn how to install, configure, update, and maintain your GitLab instance.'
---

# Administrator documentation **(CORE ONLY)**

Learn how to administer your self-managed GitLab instance.

GitLab has two product distributions available through [different subscriptions](https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/):

- The open source [GitLab Community Edition (CE)](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-foss).
- The open core [GitLab Enterprise Edition (EE)](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab).

You can [install either GitLab CE or GitLab EE](https://about.gitlab.com/install/ce-or-ee/).
However, the features you have access to depend on your chosen [subscription](https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/).

GitLab Community Edition installations have access only to Core features.

Non-administrator users can't access GitLab administration tools and settings.

GitLab.com is administered by GitLab, Inc., and only GitLab team members have
access to its administration tools and settings. Users of GitLab.com should
instead refer to the [User documentation](../user/index.md) for GitLab
configuration and usage documentation.

## 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.
  - [Database load balancing](database_load_balancing.md): Distribute database queries among multiple database servers. **(STARTER ONLY)**
  - [Omnibus support for log forwarding](https://docs.gitlab.com/omnibus/settings/logs.html#udp-log-shipping-gitlab-enterprise-edition-only) **(STARTER ONLY)**
- [Reference architectures](reference_architectures/index.md): Add additional resources to support more users.
  - [Installing GitLab on Amazon Web Services (AWS)](../install/aws/index.md): Set up GitLab on Amazon AWS.
- [Geo](geo/index.md): Replicate your GitLab instance to other geographic locations as a read-only fully operational version. **(PREMIUM ONLY)**
- [Disaster Recovery](geo/disaster_recovery/index.md): Quickly fail-over to a different site with minimal effort in a disaster situation. **(PREMIUM ONLY)**
- [Pivotal Tile](../install/pivotal/index.md): Deploy GitLab as a preconfigured appliance using Ops Manager (BOSH) for Pivotal Cloud Foundry. **(PREMIUM ONLY)**
- [Add License](../user/admin_area/license.md): Upload a license at install time to unlock features that are in paid tiers of GitLab. **(STARTER ONLY)**

### Configuring GitLab

- [Adjust your instance's timezone](timezone.md): Customize the default time zone of GitLab.
- [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.
- [Global user settings](user_settings.md): Configure instance-wide user permissions.
- [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 GitLab source installations](pages/source.md):
  Enable and configure GitLab Pages on [source installations](../install/installation.md#installation-from-source).
- [Uploads administration](uploads.md): Configure GitLab uploads storage.
- [Environment variables](environment_variables.md): Supported environment
  variables that can be used to override their default values to configure
  GitLab.
- [Plugins](file_hooks.md): With custom plugins, GitLab administrators can
  introduce custom integrations without modifying GitLab source code.
- [Enforcing Terms of Service](../user/admin_area/settings/terms.md)
- [Third party offers](../user/admin_area/settings/third_party_offers.md)
- [Compliance](compliance.md): A collection of features from across the
  application that you may configure to help ensure that your GitLab instance
  and DevOps workflow meet compliance standards.
- [Diff limits](../user/admin_area/diff_limits.md): Configure the diff rendering
  size limits of branch comparison pages.
- [Merge request diffs storage](merge_request_diffs.md): Configure merge
  requests diffs external storage.
- [Broadcast Messages](../user/admin_area/broadcast_messages.md): Send messages
  to GitLab users through the UI.
- [Elasticsearch](../integration/elasticsearch.md): Enable Elasticsearch to
  empower Advanced Search. Useful when you deal with a huge amount of data.
  **(STARTER ONLY)**
- [External Classification Policy Authorization](../user/admin_area/settings/external_authorization.md)
  **(PREMIUM ONLY)**
- [Upload a license](../user/admin_area/license.md): Upload a license to unlock
  features that are in paid tiers of GitLab. **(STARTER ONLY)**
- [Admin Area](../user/admin_area/index.md): for self-managed instance-wide
  configuration and maintenance.
- [S/MIME Signing](smime_signing_email.md): how to sign all outgoing notification
  emails with S/MIME.
- [Enabling and disabling features flags](feature_flags.md): how to enable and
  disable GitLab features deployed behind feature flags.

#### Customizing GitLab appearance

- [Header logo](../user/admin_area/appearance.md#navigation-bar): Change the logo on all pages and email headers.
- [Favicon](../user/admin_area/appearance.md#favicon): Change the default favicon to your own logo.
- [Branded login page](../user/admin_area/appearance.md#sign-in--sign-up-pages): Customize the login page with your own logo, title, and description.
- ["New Project" page](../user/admin_area/appearance.md#new-project-pages): Customize the text to be displayed on the page that opens whenever your users create a new project.
- [Additional custom email text](../user/admin_area/settings/email.md#custom-additional-text): Add additional custom text to emails sent from GitLab. **(PREMIUM ONLY)**

### Maintaining GitLab

- [Rake tasks](../raketasks/README.md): Perform various tasks for maintenance, backups, automatic webhooks setup, and more.
  - [Backup and restore](../raketasks/backup_restore.md): Backup and restore your GitLab instance.
- [Operations](operations/index.md): Keeping GitLab up and running (clean up Redis sessions, moving repositories, Sidekiq MemoryKiller, Puma).
- [Restart GitLab](restart_gitlab.md): Learn how to restart GitLab and its components.
- [Invalidate Markdown cache](invalidate_markdown_cache.md): Invalidate any cached Markdown.
- [Instance review](instance_review.md): Request a free review of your GitLab instance.

#### 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.
- [Upgrading without downtime](../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://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 repositories.
- [Web terminals](integration/terminal.md): Provide terminal access to your applications deployed to Kubernetes from within GitLab CI/CD [environments](../ci/environments/index.md#web-terminals).

## User settings and permissions

- [Creating users](../user/profile/account/create_accounts.md): Create users manually or through authentication integrations.
- [Libravatar](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 and Authorization](auth/README.md): Configure external authentication with LDAP, SAML, CAS, and additional providers.
  - [Sync LDAP](auth/ldap/index.md) **(STARTER ONLY)**
  - [Kerberos authentication](../integration/kerberos.md) **(STARTER ONLY)**
  - See also other [authentication](../topics/authentication/index.md#gitlab-administrators) topics (for example, enforcing 2FA).
- [Email users](../tools/email.md): Email GitLab users from within GitLab. **(STARTER ONLY)**
- [User Cohorts](../user/admin_area/analytics/user_cohorts.md): Display the monthly cohorts of new users and their activities over time.
- [Audit events](audit_events.md): View the changes made within the GitLab server for:
  - Groups and projects. **(STARTER)**
  - Instances. **(PREMIUM ONLY)**
- [Auditor users](auditor_users.md): Users with read-only access to all projects, groups, and other resources on the GitLab instance. **(PREMIUM ONLY)**
- [Incoming email](incoming_email.md): Configure incoming emails to allow
  users to [reply by email](reply_by_email.md), create [issues by email](../user/project/issues/managing_issues.md#new-issue-via-email) and
  [merge requests by email](../user/project/merge_requests/creating_merge_requests.md#new-merge-request-by-email), and to enable [Service Desk](../user/project/service_desk.md).
  - [Postfix for incoming email](reply_by_email_postfix_setup.md): Set up a
  basic Postfix mail server with IMAP authentication on Ubuntu for incoming
  emails.
- [Abuse reports](../user/admin_area/abuse_reports.md): View and resolve abuse reports from your users.
- [Credentials Inventory](../user/admin_area/credentials_inventory.md): With Credentials inventory, GitLab administrators can keep track of the credentials used by their users in their GitLab self-managed instance. **(ULTIMATE ONLY)**

## Project settings

- [Issue closing pattern](issue_closing_pattern.md): Customize how to close an issue from commit messages.
- [Gitaly](gitaly/index.md): Configuring Gitaly, the Git repository storage service for GitLab.
- [Default labels](../user/admin_area/labels.md): Create labels that are automatically added to every new project.
- [Restrict the use of public or internal projects](../public_access/public_access.md#restricting-the-use-of-public-or-internal-projects): Restrict the use of visibility levels for users when they create a project or a snippet.
- [Custom project templates](../user/admin_area/custom_project_templates.md): Configure a set of projects to be used as custom templates when creating a new project. **(PREMIUM ONLY)**

## Package Registry administration

- [Container Registry](packages/container_registry.md): Configure Container Registry with GitLab.
- [Package Registry](packages/index.md): Enable GitLab to act as an NPM Registry and a Maven Repository.
- [Dependency Proxy](packages/dependency_proxy.md): Configure the Dependency Proxy, a local proxy for frequently used upstream images/packages.

### 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 types](repository_storage_types.md): Information about the different repository storage types.
- [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.
- [Limit repository size](../user/admin_area/settings/account_and_limit_settings.md): Set a hard limit for your repositories' size. **(STARTER ONLY)**
- [Static objects external storage](static_objects_external_storage.md): Set external storage for static objects in a repository.

## 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): Enable or disable Auto DevOps site-wide and define the artifacts' max size and expiration time.
- [External Pipeline Validation](external_pipeline_validation.md): Enable, disable and configure external pipeline validation.
- [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).
- [Job logs](job_logs.md): Information about the job logs.
- [Register runners](../ci/runners/README.md#types-of-runners): Learn how to register and configure runners.
- [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. **(STARTER ONLY)**
- [Enable/disable Auto DevOps](../topics/autodevops/index.md#enablingdisabling-auto-devops): Enable or disable Auto DevOps for your instance.

## Snippet settings

- [Setting snippet content size limit](snippets/index.md): Set a maximum content size limit for snippets.

## Wiki settings

- [Setting wiki page content size limit](wikis/index.md): Set a maximum content size limit for wiki pages.

## Git configuration options

- [Server hooks](server_hooks.md): Server hooks (on the filesystem) for when webhooks aren't enough.
- [Git LFS configuration](lfs/index.md): Learn how to configure LFS for GitLab.
- [Housekeeping](housekeeping.md): Keep your Git repositories tidy and fast.
- [Configuring Git Protocol v2](git_protocol.md): Git protocol version 2 support.
- [Manage large files with `git-annex` (Deprecated)](git_annex.md)

## Monitoring GitLab

- [Monitoring GitLab](monitoring/index.md):
  - [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): The GitLab GitHub Importer displays Prometheus metrics to monitor the health and progress of the importer.

### Performance Monitoring

- [GitLab Performance Monitoring](monitoring/performance/index.md):
  - [Enable Performance Monitoring](monitoring/performance/gitlab_configuration.md): Enable GitLab Performance Monitoring.
  - [GitLab performance monitoring with Prometheus](monitoring/prometheus/index.md): Configure GitLab and Prometheus for measuring performance metrics.
  - [GitLab performance monitoring with Grafana](monitoring/performance/grafana_configuration.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.

## Analytics

- [Pseudonymizer](pseudonymizer.md): Export data from a GitLab database to CSV files in a secure way. **(ULTIMATE)**

## 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.
- [Troubleshooting Elasticsearch](troubleshooting/elasticsearch.md)
- [Navigating GitLab via Rails console](troubleshooting/navigating_gitlab_via_rails_console.md)
- [GitLab application limits](instance_limits.md)

### Support Team Docs

The GitLab Support Team has collected a lot of information about troubleshooting GitLab
instances. These documents are normally used by the Support Team itself, or by customers
with direct guidance from a Support Team member. GitLab administrators may find the
information useful for troubleshooting, but if you are experiencing trouble with your
GitLab instance, you should check your [support options](https://about.gitlab.com/support/)
before referring to these documents.

WARNING:
Using the commands listed in the documentation below could result in data loss or
other damage to a GitLab instance, and should only be used by experienced administrators
who are aware of the risks.

- [Useful diagnostics tools](troubleshooting/diagnostics_tools.md)
- [Useful Linux commands](troubleshooting/linux_cheat_sheet.md)
- [Troubleshooting Kubernetes](troubleshooting/kubernetes_cheat_sheet.md)
- [Troubleshooting PostgreSQL](troubleshooting/postgresql.md)
- [Guide to test environments](troubleshooting/test_environments.md) (for Support Engineers)
- [GitLab Rails console commands](troubleshooting/gitlab_rails_cheat_sheet.md) (for Support Engineers)
- [Troubleshooting SSL](troubleshooting/ssl.md)
- Useful links:
  - [GitLab Developer Docs](../development/README.md)
  - [Repairing and recovering broken Git repositories](https://git.seveas.net/repairing-and-recovering-broken-git-repositories.html)
  - [Testing with OpenSSL](https://www.feistyduck.com/library/openssl-cookbook/online/ch-testing-with-openssl.html)
  - [`strace` zine](https://wizardzines.com/zines/strace/)
- GitLab.com-specific resources:
  - [Group SAML/SCIM setup](troubleshooting/group_saml_scim.md)
