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 legacy XNAT Pipeline Engine has been deprecated, but pipelines can still be enabled by installing the Pipeline Engine Plugin as well as the Pipeline Engine itself. In the interest of reproducible science and running on supported technology, 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 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
- Admin UI - File System Settings
- Admin UI - Performance
- Configuring JDBC Connection Pools
- Configuring Tomcat To Avoid Errors
- Multiple Web Front Ends to a Single XNAT Database or Archive (Multi-Node XNAT)
- Using Gmail as your XNAT SMTP Server
- XNAT Setup Options - Auto-populate Data
- XNAT Setup Options - Custom Configuration Settings
Customizing XNAT
Connecting XNAT to Other Systems
XNAT System Monitoring and Maintenance
This section is also available in the XNAT IT Operations documentation.