I have two questions that I realize are pretty open ended, but if anyone has anything to say based on real-world experience, and/or if there is a F.A.Q. beyond what is on the main Moodle site, I'd appreciate it. For the purpose of the campus' central IT group to tell us what they'd charge to provide Moodle service (the server, administering it, administering Moodle from a systems perspsective (installing it, upgrading, troubleshooting) -- not creating courses, instructors, and the like):
Any recommended hardware (i.e., RAM, # processors, CPU speed, etc.) configurations based on the number of users (simultaneous or other)? The target is language leaarning? (The IT group is fairly UNIX oriented in case it matters.)
How much time would a qualified person need to set it up, upgrade, troubleshoot (beyond the normal OS patches, OS/hardware troubleshooting, backup)?
Thanks.
Bob
In reply to Bob Majors
Re: Server hardware recommendations; system admin time required
by Michael Penney -
Hi Bob, it would depend on how many students you expect (server hardware).
With a dual 2.8 ghz 1.5 gb ram, redhat enterprise box, we haven't breached 5% system resources with 350 active users, 20 courses, 1-2k page views (as log entries) per day.
That server is also running a couple postnuke sites that feed to our home page, and our campus student newspaper, figure they get another 2-3k page views (but not logins) per day.
Server admin time is pretty minimal with RedhatE, Moodle pretty much runs on the default settings, and after a few configuration changes, there isn't much to do.
Figure 10-20 hours for start up on a standard linux/unix server and maybe 5 hours per week (mainly just checking on things), again depending on how many courses/users, but that should be pretty safe.
Of course that depends on how MySQL/PHP savvy the admins are, they may have some learning time to get up to speed.
Before that ran Moodle 1.1-1.2 on an old g3 plugged into the 10mb wall socket for a year of testing, with 2-3 classes and 50 or so users, and never seemed to slow down or peak over 25% system resources there.
In reply to Bob Majors
Re: Server hardware recommendations; system admin time required
by Thomas Haynes -
Bob...
We are currently running moodle on a server that the computer club built from parts.
It is on an AMD 1100 with 768 megs of ram and and 2 IDE hand-me-down hard drives. One is for backup, and I copy the backup to another linux machine to be paranoid.
The OS is Whitebox Enterpise Linux (RHEL 3 rebuilt from source). The machine houses survey tools, gradebooks, various projects, some web pages from classes, etc. I do not use a gui and administer via WinSCP (or sometimes webmin when I am on campus). I use Zend Optimizer to keep things snappy. I am at about 60 days of uptime.
I figure it was 5 hours to install and initially set up this machine, but I am pretty compulsive. I spend probably 2 hours a week with various moodle-related administrative issues that are not a function of my own classes. I consider myself reasonably adept at basic server administration, but there is no way I am as efficient as a UNIX-oriented IT group.
According to webalizer, I have averaged over 18,000 hits a day on the server for this month. There are about 40 courses in various states of activity. There are about 400 users. Many of the students are enrolled in more than one course. We have multiple moodle sites on the server, but there is one main academic site.
Budget on this is minimal as you can see. Performance has been great.
I am about to make a case for a hand-me-down server that is being upgraded. It is a dual P3 with scsi and a gig of ram.
Regards... Tom
We are currently running moodle on a server that the computer club built from parts.
It is on an AMD 1100 with 768 megs of ram and and 2 IDE hand-me-down hard drives. One is for backup, and I copy the backup to another linux machine to be paranoid.
The OS is Whitebox Enterpise Linux (RHEL 3 rebuilt from source). The machine houses survey tools, gradebooks, various projects, some web pages from classes, etc. I do not use a gui and administer via WinSCP (or sometimes webmin when I am on campus). I use Zend Optimizer to keep things snappy. I am at about 60 days of uptime.
I figure it was 5 hours to install and initially set up this machine, but I am pretty compulsive. I spend probably 2 hours a week with various moodle-related administrative issues that are not a function of my own classes. I consider myself reasonably adept at basic server administration, but there is no way I am as efficient as a UNIX-oriented IT group.
According to webalizer, I have averaged over 18,000 hits a day on the server for this month. There are about 40 courses in various states of activity. There are about 400 users. Many of the students are enrolled in more than one course. We have multiple moodle sites on the server, but there is one main academic site.
Budget on this is minimal as you can see. Performance has been great.
I am about to make a case for a hand-me-down server that is being upgraded. It is a dual P3 with scsi and a gig of ram.
Regards... Tom