Hosting Moodle: how to define for a quote?

Hosting Moodle: how to define for a quote?

by Derek Chirnside -
Number of replies: 9
We are working on getting a few quotes for hosting a Moodle server, but I'm just not quite sure how to frame things.

I've been spoiled: the ICT department I have worked with in the past just did it, it was stable and well run. They kept watch on loads, storage and it was great.

Now I am starting again.
  1. Is it enough to say "Can handle 40 concurrent users" ? Or is there more to it than this??
  2. Is there a standard Moodle metric - I can't actually see how things could be to generalised, because if you design for something like "30 students log in for a quiz at 11.00" then the server cannot avoid being hammered.
  3. In a big moodle establishment, is there a load balancing thing that means capacity can be shared around . .
I feel like I have a little of the understanding, and you know what it says about a little knowledge . . .

Extras, plugins etc: do any moodle provides run any sort of shared costing - like we wanted a Menu block installed for a project, and the provider quoted $750. As a non-expert I had installed it in 10 minutes. Testing is the issue then maybe? All eight clients on this server would benefit I am sure.

We are actually looking for a small installation, skinned,
Extras: navigation menu blocks, multiple file upload, slightly improved video clip deployment than 'standard'
Maybe 15-50 courses (yes, that variable)
500 - 2000 users, but low level of activity expected.
We would do help for users at the home base.

How to frame this is the question.

-Derek
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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Hosting Moodle: how to define for a quote?

by Ali Ghorbani Moghadam -
For having around 40 concurrent users with a think time of I would say 6 to 10 seconds, and around 2K users registered, I say having only one server would be enough. You'll need to setup your prefork mpm in apache and it wouldn't hurt to have memcached as well.

Regards,
Ali


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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Hosting Moodle: how to define for a quote?

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
From the numbers you quote, I don't think the performance is an issue. A single server, or even a shared (Linux) server, likely to handle the load.

The customization is a different story. Till the hoster understands what you really need could take a long time, which is a must for a fair quote. But without knowing how long that'll take and nobody to pay for that time the hoster is reluctant to spend his time. The old-fashioned solution would be to engage somebody to formulate the quotation!

There is also a not-so-nice alternative. Contact a number of hosters and ask for their quotation forms. Moodle-specialists are bound to have their own list of questions for an estimate!
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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Hosting Moodle: how to define for a quote?

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Talk to some Moodle Partners. I'm not just advertising - someone with Moodle experience will iron out all these issues for you.

BTW... $700+ dollars to install an optional plugin is, to say the least, a bit cheeky.
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In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Hosting Moodle: how to define for a quote?

by Dan Marsden -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Plugins guardians Picture of Testers Picture of Translators
it's not so cheeky if it's a plugin that hasn't had a security review...

Before installing a 3rd party plugin/module on our servers, a mandatory security review is required - this is a once off requirement for each plugin - if one of our other clients has already paid for this then it's an easy install....but if no-one else has asked for it before....then the client asking for it will need to front up with the funding to pay for a proper review.

We've talked a lot about ways of sharing this information between partners - so that we aren't all duplicating our effort. (no proper solution quite yet)

Unfortunately the skillset of 3rd party developers is very varied - and reviewing a module can take anywhere between 1-8hours.

Often we are able to fail a module with a 5min look (I've failed 2 modules like this in the past 2 months)

It's also really important for people not to encourage installation of any old 3rd party code onto production sites (Julian Ridden and I have had some great conversations around this!) smile
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In reply to Dan Marsden

Re: Hosting Moodle: how to define for a quote?

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Hi Dan,

I agree completely. My angle is more to strongly discourage use of 3rd party plugins at all.

I have come across hosting companies charging that sort of money (and more) for *any* plugin installation and I'm pretty sure that they aren't spending 8 hours doing a security review smile
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In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Hosting Moodle: how to define for a quote?

by Dan Marsden -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Plugins guardians Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

hehe - maybe you're just lucky that Julian isn't speaking at your Moodle moots.. evil

seriously though - one of the great things about Moodle is the community and some of the 3rd party modules/hacks/code are really useful! - it's just important for people to understand there are security (and in some cases performance) issues to consider when using 3rd party code.

I'd really like to see some way we can share this responsibility across partners/the community and share the information about reviews - we just need a mechanism to do this safely.





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In reply to Dan Marsden

Re: Hosting Moodle: how to define for a quote?

by Tim Hunt -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
And, indeed, fix the code of some of these useful, but not very well written plugins - rather than just share the knowledge of how bad they are. wink
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Hosting Moodle: how to define for a quote?

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Thus, inevitably, making one the maintainer......
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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Hosting Moodle: how to define for a quote?

by Paul Vaughan -
I'd be interested to know how you tell how many users are 'concurrent'. (I've run load-balancing tests using JMeter but have no idea if 30 or 100 is realistic for concurrency.)

The database has >18,000 users, we've had 1,500 new sign-ups last week, but as far as concurrency goes... no idea. Certailnly the server was being hit hard when 120 users were logged in at the same time for induction.


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