Server for technical training

Server for technical training

by Dave Ray -
Number of replies: 5

Hi Moodle techs,
       I have been asked by several plant managers to guide them
in department server hardware specs for delivering technical
training plant wide. I suggested dual processor using Linux with
3 Gig Ram and the lastest Moodle. Training would include diagrams,
schematics, and concurrent users. Multi-location access is important
as possible clients such as Unilin would require.

       Suggestions?  Thanks for your input.

--------Dave

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In reply to Dave Ray

Re: Server for technical training

by Michael Penney -
Hi Dave, we'd need the number of total users and the max number of users you'd expect to be logged on at the same time.

Delivering diagrams and such to a large number of users (assuming they are images rather than rendered on the fly) is going to require good bandwidth, also (for instance if a 100 people try to get a 100 kb graphic at the same time that's ~80% of your gigabit connection).
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In reply to Michael Penney

Re: Server for technical training

by Dave Ray -

Hi Michael,
       Most images would be scanned at @ 80-240KB; however
it would be rare to have more than 35 users accessing the same
page at the same time.

-----Dave

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In reply to Michael Penney

Re: Server for technical training

by Samuli Karevaara -
It's true that bandwidth is often the bottleneck on busy sites, but I think you have an error of one magnitude there. I'm terrible in dealing with these big numbers, but calculating with round and rough numbers: gigabit ~= billion bits per second ~= 125 million bytes per second ~= 122070 kilobytes per second. 100*100 / 122070 ~= 8,2%.

Editing myself: And that's when they download in the same instant. If the 100 users download the image randomly within just one second, the 8,2% drops to less than one tenth of that. Well, there is of course the disk seek times et cetera, but this bandwidth-wise this is what a gigabit can take.
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In reply to Dave Ray

Re: Server for technical training

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
I suggest to break the demand in three subsystems:

1. the processing part

2. hard disk throughput, including database activity

3. network

Item 3 has nothing to do with moodle. You have to analyse that separately.

You seem to have a clear idea of how much raw bytes will be delivered per sec. at various times. Get down to numbers and compare with the specs of your harddisk system. That's item 2.

Item 1 is difficult to calculate in numbers. But once you have the figures in item 2, experienced hands here will be able to give advice.

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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Server for technical training

by Dave Ray -

Hi Visvanath,
           Thanks for your feedback---
        I'm in the process of getting the data
you mentioned and will post relevant info.

-------Dave

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