Guides for GitHub Enterprise

You can change the way GitHub Enterprise Server authenticates with your existing accounts at any time.

Accounts
Authentication
Enterprise
Identity

Configuring SAML single sign-on for your enterprise

You can control and secure access to your GitHub Enterprise Server instance by configuring SAML single sign-on (SSO) through your identity provider (IdP).

Accounts
Authentication
Enterprise
Identity
SSO

About SAML for enterprise IAM

You can use SAML single sign-on (SSO) to centrally manage access to your GitHub Enterprise Server instance.

Accounts
Access management
Authentication
Enterprise
Identity

Using CAS

If you use Central Authentication Service (CAS) to centralize access to multiple web applications, you can integrate GitHub Enterprise Server by configuring CAS authentication for your instance.

Accounts
Authentication
Enterprise
Identity
SSO

Using LDAP

If you use Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) to centralize access across applications, you can integrate GitHub Enterprise Server by configuring LDAP authentication for your instance.

Accounts
Authentication
Enterprise
Identity

Using SAML for enterprise IAM

You can centrally manage accounts and access to your GitHub Enterprise Server instance with SAML single sign-on (SSO).

Accessing the administrative shell (SSH)

SSH access allows you to run the GitHub Enterprise Server command line utilities to troubleshoot, run backups, and configure replication.

Enterprise
Fundamentals
SSH

Administering your instance from the web UI

To perform administrative tasks for your GitHub Enterprise Server instance, you can use the Management Console and site admin dashboard.

Enterprise

Configuring the hostname for your instance

You can provide reliable access to your GitHub Enterprise Server instance by assigning a hostname that's accessible over your network.

Enterprise
Fundamentals
Infrastructure

Changing the hostname for your instance

If you want to change the hostname for an existing GitHub Enterprise Server instance, you must restore the settings and data to a new instance.

Enterprise
Fundamentals
Infrastructure

Configuring backups on your instance

As part of a disaster recovery plan, you can protect production data on your GitHub Enterprise Server instance by configuring automated backups.

Backups
Enterprise
Fundamentals
Infrastructure

Configuring built-in firewall rules

You can view default firewall rules and customize rules for your GitHub Enterprise Server instance.

Enterprise
Fundamentals
Infrastructure
Networking

Configuring code scanning for your appliance

You can enable, configure and disable code scanning for your GitHub Enterprise Server instance. Code scanning allows users to scan code for vulnerabilities and errors.

Advanced Security
Code scanning
Enterprise
Security

Configuring dependency review for your appliance

To help users understand dependency changes when reviewing pull requests, you can enable, configure, and disable dependency review for your GitHub Enterprise Server instance.

Advanced Security
Enterprise
Dependency review
Security

GitHub Enterprise Server uses the dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP) for DNS settings when DHCP leases provide nameservers. If nameservers are not provided by a dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP) lease, or if you need to use specific DNS settings, you can specify the nameservers manually.

Enterprise
Fundamentals
Infrastructure
Networking

Configuring rate limits

You can set rate limits for GitHub Enterprise Server using the Management Console.

Enterprise
Infrastructure
Performance

Configuring secret scanning for your appliance

You can enable, configure, and disable secret scanning for your GitHub Enterprise Server instance. Secret scanning allows users to scan code for accidentally committed secrets.

Advanced Security
Enterprise
Secret scanning
Security

Configuring TLS

You can configure Transport Layer Security (TLS) on your GitHub Enterprise Server instance so that you can use a certificate that is signed by a trusted certificate authority.

Enterprise
Fundamentals
Infrastructure
Networking
Security

Verifying or approving a domain for your enterprise

You can verify your ownership of domains with GitHub to confirm the identity of organizations owned by your enterprise account. You can also approve domains where organization members can receive email notifications.

Enterprise
Notifications
Organizations
Policy

Managing GitHub Mobile for your enterprise

You can decide whether people can use GitHub Mobile to connect to your GitHub Enterprise Server instance.

Enterprise
Mobile

Configuring SSH connections to your instance

You can increase the security of your GitHub Enterprise Server instance by configuring the SSH algorithms that clients can use to establish a connection.

Authentication
Enterprise
Infrastructure
Networking
Security
SSH

Configuring host keys for your instance

You can increase the security of your GitHub Enterprise Server instance by configuring the algorithms that your instance uses to generate and advertise host keys for incoming SSH connections.

Authentication
Enterprise
Infrastructure
Networking
Security
SSH

Enabling and scheduling maintenance mode

Some standard maintenance procedures, such as upgrading your GitHub Enterprise Server instance or restoring backups, require the instance to be taken offline for normal use.

Enterprise
Fundamentals
Maintenance
Upgrades

Enabling automatic user license sync for your enterprise

You can manage license usage across your GitHub Enterprise environments by automatically syncing user licenses from your GitHub Enterprise Server instance to GitHub Enterprise Cloud.

Enterprise
GitHub Connect
Licensing

Enabling private mode

In private mode, GitHub Enterprise Server requires every user to sign in to access the installation.

Access management
Authentication
Enterprise
Fundamentals
Infrastructure
Networking
Privacy
Security

Enabling subdomain isolation

You can set up subdomain isolation to securely separate user-supplied content from other portions of your GitHub Enterprise Server appliance.

Enterprise
Fundamentals
Infrastructure
Networking
Security

Enabling unified contributions for your enterprise

You can allow users to include anonymized contribution counts for their work on your GitHub Enterprise Server instance in their contribution graphs on GitHub.com.

Enterprise
GitHub Connect

Enabling unified search for your enterprise

You can allow users to include repositories on GitHub.com in their search results when searching from your GitHub Enterprise Server instance.

Enterprise
GitHub Connect
GitHub search

Network ports

Open network ports selectively based on the network services you need to expose for administrators, end users, and email support.

Enterprise
Infrastructure
Networking
Security

Site admin dashboard

You can use the site admin dashboard to manage users, organizations, and repositories on your GitHub Enterprise Server instance.

Enterprise
Fundamentals

Troubleshooting TLS errors

If you run into TLS issues with your appliance, you can take actions to resolve them.

Enterprise
Errors
Infrastructure
Networking
Security
Troubleshooting

Using GitHub Enterprise Server with a load balancer

Use a load balancer in front of a single GitHub Enterprise Server instance or a pair of instances in a High Availability configuration.

Enterprise
High availability
Infrastructure
Networking

About high availability configuration

In a high availability configuration, a fully redundant secondary GitHub Enterprise Server appliance is kept in sync with the primary appliance through replication of all major datastores.

Enterprise
High availability
Infrastructure

Accessing the monitor dashboard

GitHub Enterprise Server includes a web-based monitoring dashboard that displays historical data about your GitHub Enterprise Server appliance, such as CPU and storage usage, application and authentication response times, and general system health.

Enterprise
Fundamentals
Infrastructure
Monitoring
Performance

Creating a high availability replica

In an active/passive configuration, the replica appliance is a redundant copy of the primary appliance. If the primary appliance fails, high availability mode allows the replica to act as the primary appliance, allowing minimal service disruption.

Enterprise
High availability
Infrastructure

Differences between clustering and high availability (HA)

Learn about the differences between deployment topologies for the virtual machines (VMs) that comprise a GitHub Enterprise Server instance.

Clustering
Enterprise
High availability
Infrastructure

Enabling automatic update checks

You can enable automatic update checks so that your GitHub Enterprise Server instance checks for and downloads the latest GitHub Enterprise Server release.

Enterprise
Upgrades

Initiating a failover to your replica appliance

You can failover to a GitHub Enterprise Server replica appliance using the command line for maintenance and testing, or if the primary appliance fails.

Enterprise
High availability
Infrastructure

Recommended alert thresholds

You can configure an alert to notify you of system resource issues before they affect your GitHub Enterprise Server appliance's performance.

Enterprise
Infrastructure
Monitoring
Performance
Storage

Setting up external monitoring

You can monitor basic system resources on your GitHub Enterprise Server appliance using either the SNMP or collectd statistics collection protocols.

Enterprise
Infrastructure
Monitoring
Performance

Upgrade requirements

Before upgrading GitHub Enterprise Server, review these recommendations and requirements to plan your upgrade strategy.

Enterprise
Upgrades

Upgrading GitHub Enterprise Server

Upgrade GitHub Enterprise Server to get the latest features and security updates.

Enterprise
Upgrades

About system logs

To help administrators understand activity and errors, GitHub Enterprise Server stores system logs.

Auditing
Enterprise
Logging
Security

About GitHub Support

You can contact GitHub Support for help troubleshooting issues you encounter while using GitHub.

Support

About using actions in your enterprise

GitHub Enterprise Server includes most GitHub-authored actions, and has options for enabling access to other actions from GitHub.com and GitHub Marketplace.

Actions
Enterprise

Backing up and restoring GitHub Enterprise Server with GitHub Actions enabled

To restore a backup of your GitHub Enterprise Server instance when GitHub Actions is enabled, you must configure GitHub Actions before restoring the backup with GitHub Enterprise Server Backup Utilities.

Actions
Backups
Enterprise
Infrastructure

Enabling automatic access to GitHub.com actions using GitHub Connect

To allow GitHub Actions in your enterprise to use actions from GitHub.com, you can connect your enterprise instance to GitHub Enterprise Cloud.

Actions
Enterprise
GitHub Connect

Enforcing policies for GitHub Actions in your enterprise

You can enforce policies for GitHub Actions within your enterprise's organizations, or allow policies to be set in each organization.

Actions
Enterprise
Policies

Getting started with GitHub Actions for GitHub Enterprise Server

Learn about enabling and configuring GitHub Actions on GitHub Enterprise Server for the first time.

Actions
Enterprise

High availability for GitHub Actions

There are some special considerations for administering GitHub Actions in a high availability configuration.

Actions
Enterprise
High availability
Infrastructure
Storage

Using a staging environment

Learn about using GitHub Actions with GitHub Enterprise Server staging instances.

Actions
Enterprise
Infrastructure
Upgrades

About enterprise accounts

With GitHub Enterprise Server, you can use an enterprise account to give administrators a single point of visibility and management.

Accounts
Enterprise
Fundamentals

About upgrades to new releases

You can benefit from new features and bug fixes for GitHub Enterprise Server by upgrading your enterprise to a newly released version.

Enterprise
Upgrades

Configuring package ecosystem support for your enterprise

You can configure GitHub Packages for your enterprise by globally enabling or disabling individual package ecosystems on your enterprise, including Container registry, Docker, and npm. Learn about other configuration requirements to support specific package ecosystems.

Enterprise
Packages

Quickstart for configuring your MinIO storage bucket for GitHub Packages

Quickstart

Configure your custom MinIO storage bucket for use with GitHub Packages.

Packages
Enterprise
Storage

About pre-receive hooks

Pre-receive hooks are scripts that run on the GitHub Enterprise Server appliance that you can use to implement quality checks.

Enterprise
Policies
Pre-receive hooks

Creating a pre-receive hook environment

To execute pre-receive hooks, use either the default pre-receive environment, or create a custom environment.

Enterprise
Policies
Pre-receive hooks

Creating a pre-receive hook script

Use pre-receive hook scripts to create requirements for accepting or rejecting a push based on the contents.

Enterprise
Policies
Pre-receive hooks

Enforcing policies for code security and analysis for your enterprise

You can enforce policies to manage the use of GitHub Advanced Security features within your enterprise's organizations.

Advanced Security
Code scanning
Enterprise
Policies
Secret scanning
Security

Enforcing policies for security settings in your enterprise

You can enforce policies to manage security settings in your enterprise's organizations, or allow policies to be set in each organization.

Enterprise
Policies
Security

Enforcing policies for projects in your enterprise

You can enforce policies for project boards within your enterprise's organizations, or allow policies to be set in each organization.

Enterprise
Policies
Projects

Enforcing repository management policies in your enterprise

You can enforce policies for repository management within your enterprise's organizations, or allow policies to be set in each organization.

Enterprise
Policies
Repositories
Security

Enforcing team policies in your enterprise

You can enforce policies for teams in your enterprise's organizations, or allow policies to be set in each organization.

Enterprise
Policies
Teams

Restricting email notifications for your enterprise

You can prevent your enterprise's information from leaking into personal email accounts by restricting the domains where members can receive email notifications about activity in organizations owned by your enterprise.

Enterprise
Notifications
Organizations
Policies

Managing pre-receive hooks on your instance

Configure how people will use pre-receive hooks on your GitHub Enterprise Server instance.

Enterprise
Policies
Pre-receive hooks

Auditing SSH keys

Site administrators can initiate an instance-wide audit of SSH keys.

Auditing
Enterprise
Security
SSH

Auditing users across your enterprise

The audit log dashboard shows site administrators the actions performed by all users and organizations across your enterprise within the current month and previous six months. The audit log includes details such as who performed the action, what the action was, and when the action was performed.

Auditing
Enterprise
Organizations
Security
User account

Configuring Git Large File Storage for your enterprise

Git Large File Storage (Git LFS) is an open source extension to Git that allows you to work with large files the same way as other text files.

Git
Enterprise
LFS
Storage

Configuring visibility for organization membership

You can set visibility for new organization members across your enterprise to public or private. You can also prevent members from changing their visibility from the default.

Enterprise
Organizations
User account

Continuous integration using Jenkins

You can automatically trigger build jobs on a Jenkins server when pushes are made to a repository in your GitHub Enterprise Server instance.

CI
Enterprise

Disabling Git SSH access on your enterprise

You can prevent people from using Git over SSH for certain or all repositories on your enterprise.

Enterprise
Policies
Security
SSH

Managing dormant users

By default, a user account is considered to be dormant if it has not been active for 90 days. You can configure the length of time a user must be inactive to be considered dormant and choose to suspend dormant users to release user licenses.

Accounts
Enterprise
Licensing

About the audit log for your enterprise

To support debugging and internal and external compliance, GitHub Enterprise Server provides logs of audited system, user, organization, and repository events.

Auditing
Enterprise
Logging
Security

Accessing the audit log for your enterprise

You can view aggregated actions from all of the organizations owned by an enterprise account in the enterprise's audit log.

Auditing
Enterprise
Logging

Searching the audit log for your enterprise

You can search an extensive list of audited actions in your enterprise.

Auditing
Enterprise
Logging

Configuring the audit log for your enterprise

You can configure settings for your enterprise's audit log.

Auditing
Enterprise
Logging

Streaming the audit log for your enterprise

Tutorial

You can stream audit and Git events data from GitHub to an external data management system.

Auditing
Enterprise
Logging
Organizations

Using the audit log API for your enterprise

Tutorial

You can programmatically retrieve enterprise events with the REST API.

Auditing
Enterprise
Logging
API

Audit log events for your enterprise

Learn about audit log events recorded for your enterprise.

Auditing
Enterprise
Logging
Security

Activity dashboard

The Activity dashboard gives you an overview of all the activity in your enterprise.

Enterprise

Viewing push logs

Site administrators can view a list of Git push operations for any repository on the enterprise.

Auditing
Enterprise
Git
Logging

Log forwarding

GitHub Enterprise Server uses syslog-ng to forward system and application logs to the server you specify.

Auditing
Enterprise
Logging
Security

Managing global webhooks

You can configure global webhooks to notify external web servers when events occur within your enterprise.

Enterprise
Webhooks

Managing projects using Jira

You can integrate Jira with GitHub Enterprise Server for project management.

Enterprise
Project management

Inviting people to manage your enterprise

You can add and remove enterprise owners for your enterprise account.

Administrator
Enterprise
User account

Roles in an enterprise

Everyone in an enterprise is a member of the enterprise. To control access to your enterprise's settings and data, you can assign different roles to members of your enterprise.

Enterprise

Viewing people in your enterprise

To audit access to enterprise-owned resources or user license usage, enterprise owners can view every administrator and member of the enterprise.

Enterprise

Placing a legal hold on a user or organization

You can place a legal hold on a user or organization to ensure that repositories they own cannot be permanently removed from your enterprise.

Accounts
Auditing
Enterprise
Organizations
User account

Preventing users from creating organizations

You can prevent users from creating organizations in your enterprise.

Enterprise
Organizations
Policies

Rebuilding contributions data

You may need to rebuild contributions data to link existing commits to a user account.

Enterprise
Repositories
User account

Requiring two-factor authentication for an organization

You can require organization members and outside collaborators to enable two-factor authentication for their personal accounts in an organization, making it harder for malicious actors to access an organization's repositories and settings.

2FA
Enterprise
Organizations
Policies
Security

Suspending and unsuspending users

If a user leaves or moves to a different part of the company, you should remove or modify their ability to access your GitHub Enterprise Server instance.

Access management
Enterprise
Security
User account

Restoring a deleted organization

You can partially restore an organization that was previously deleted on your GitHub Enterprise Server instance.

Administrator
Enterprise
Organizations

About the Management Console

From the Management Console, you can initialize, configure, and monitor your GitHub Enterprise Server instance.

Administrator
Enterprise
Fundamentals
Networking
Monitoring

Managing access to the Management Console

You can access the Management Console as well as configure Management Console authentication rate limits.

Enterprise
Authentication
SSH
User account

Accessing the Management Console

You can access the Management Console using the Management Console password.

Enterprise
Authentication

Troubleshooting access to the Management Console