XNAT Administration

What Do XNAT Admins Need to Know?

XNAT is now easier to set up and configure than ever before, with more control being brought in front of admins via the Admin UI. 

With that said, however, there are some tasks related to administering your XNAT that still require access to the file system (such as adding pipelines and plugins), and still some reporting (such as complex data freezes) that can only be done with access to the PostgreSQL database. 

These guidelines will teach you the "what", "why", and "how" of being an XNAT Admin.

To get a guided walkthrough of the core tasks of administering an XNAT, try taking the free Admin 101 Course on XNAT Academy

XNAT Installation

See Getting Started With XNAT for a full guide to XNAT installation options

XNAT First-time Setup

The first time you launch XNAT, there are a series of initial configurations that must be set. This will only happen once.

Getting To Know XNAT

XNAT is a powerful set of software with a complex set of components under the hood. However, we provide administrative tools that allow you to control many core behaviors directly from the UI. You must be logged in as a site administrator to access these controls.

Managing Users and Roles

Managing Sites and Studies

You can set XNAT Administrator privileges to give admin users access to all studies and study data in your XNAT. For more details, see Administering Users.

Adding Data Types and New Functions to XNAT

Extending Data Types with Custom Forms

Administering Image Data Import Methods

Managing Resource Files

Computing in XNAT

The Pipeline Engine is being deprecated in XNAT 1.8, and the "Autorun" pipeline is no longer running by default. Snapshot generation is now handled by an internal service. Processes can still be run in pipelines, but in the interest of reproducible science, we highly recommend converting your computational processes to containers.

Setting up the Container Service

Configuring The Pipeline Engine

Related Topics:

Administering the Event Service

The Event Service has been introduced in XNAT 1.8, and offers powerful abilities to subscribe data processing actions to event triggers. This feature should be monitored closely, however.

Enabling the XNAT Event Service

Monitoring Event Service History

Known Caveats and Limitations of the Event Service

XNAT Security Settings

Advanced Setup Options

Customizing XNAT

Connecting XNAT to Other Systems

XNAT System Monitoring and Maintenance

This section is also available in the XNAT IT Operations documentation.