There are installations of that size but, as with any VLE, that's getting very serious. You might want to consider talking to one of the moodle partners at moodle.com about some consultancy. If you are talking about access external authentication information then Moodle is perfectly capable of linking to an external database - I believe Sybase is supported, but again it would all depend on the detail of what you are needing to do.
Hi Sven, the system can handle as many students as you have. The question is, can your hardware handle the (Moodle/PHP/MySQL) system with that amount of data traffic?
For that number, I'd recommend a cluster of 2 or 3 decent p3 or p4 (or g5) servers, with as much RAM as you can get (slower servers with more RAM better than faster servers with less RAM) sharing a RAID array with a separate database server. Use Linux if possible (we use RedHat Enterprise here), as it is fastest.
Watch your system load and add new boxen as required
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For that number, I'd recommend a cluster of 2 or 3 decent p3 or p4 (or g5) servers, with as much RAM as you can get (slower servers with more RAM better than faster servers with less RAM) sharing a RAID array with a separate database server. Use Linux if possible (we use RedHat Enterprise here), as it is fastest.
Watch your system load and add new boxen as required
Sven,
we are running with similar numbers. Search for my name in the forums, and you'll find plenty of scalability discussions. In summary:
- yes, it will handle it, but you'll need some good people tuning the database and server config. And wait for 1.4.3 or 1.5 which include performance fixes.
- you'll be happier if you can stage it -- getting the 30K student records into moodle you can do in one go, but don't tell 30K student to use moodle on "day 1" -- get 5K for one semester, tune the system and go for 30K in the next semester.
- use a load-balanced cluster.
- you are likely to find minor bottlenecks, don't be afraid to roll up your sleeves and enhance performance.
- using Postgres is probably faster than mysql but you'll need good people tuning it... actually, use the DB your sysadmins know better.
we are running with similar numbers. Search for my name in the forums, and you'll find plenty of scalability discussions. In summary:
- yes, it will handle it, but you'll need some good people tuning the database and server config. And wait for 1.4.3 or 1.5 which include performance fixes.
- you'll be happier if you can stage it -- getting the 30K student records into moodle you can do in one go, but don't tell 30K student to use moodle on "day 1" -- get 5K for one semester, tune the system and go for 30K in the next semester.
- use a load-balanced cluster.
- you are likely to find minor bottlenecks, don't be afraid to roll up your sleeves and enhance performance.
- using Postgres is probably faster than mysql but you'll need good people tuning it... actually, use the DB your sysadmins know better.