What server to use

What server to use

by Tom Wootton -
Number of replies: 6

I have been researching both moodle forums and at dreamhost, which is a provider of hosting services. I am about to buy their dedicated service and would appreciate feedback to make sure I am doing the right thing.

I am looking at their dedicated server with the following specs:

2 core, 4 GB RAM, 500GB SATA hard drive, Debian Lenny (5.0 – Stable), One dedicated IP address, Managed backup, Unlimited bandwidth, 4-hour SLA (4 hour hardware replacement guarantee, Waived set up $99, $129 /month

I am building a moodle site with 30 or so courses with the first course free, which means I hope to attract 1,000 or more users per month and hope to convert some percent of them to pay for more courses. We need to sell 1,000 courses a month within a year for it to make sense and will likely up the number of free trials to accommodate such a number of paid as we determine what percent of the free trials end up buying and how many courses the take on average.

There will be forums, limited chat, and tests, but not that extensive in terms of quiz and test needs.

I was planning originally to ramp up over time, but then dreamhost raised the price of dedicated from $99 to $129 and I wanted to lock in the price before they raise it again. It is a new service for them to add to their existing and they priced it way below everyone else. If the specs will serve me long term it is worth the investment. Does anyone know if I am choosing a system that will serve my needs for at least the first year?
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In reply to Tom Wootton

Re: What server to use

by Grant Mucha -

Have you looked at GoDaddy's offerings? Your biggest challenge will likely be additional ram.

Anyway I took a quick look and this is similar to a dedicated I own at Godaddy.

Under Dedicated Servers (64 Bit)
Memory Hog - CentOS
Ensure your server performance is always up
to expectations.
  • OS: CentOS 64-bit
  • CPU: Intel® Core™ 2 Quad - 2.50 GHz
  • RAM: 8 GB
  • Storage: 2 x 300 GB hard drives
  • Bandwidth: 1,500 GB per month

Regular price is $2077 yearly or $173.15 however if you use the coupon code "gdz412bn" you get 25% off the total and save over $500. New price is $1558 yearly or $129 monthly which I believe is in your range based on above.

Good Luck!

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In reply to Grant Mucha

Re: What server to use

by Tom Wootton -

Thanks Grant, That looks like a better deal with the discount. Do you mind if I ask what kind of numbers you are running on your 8 GB setup in terms of students, courses, etc.? Are you running everything there including sql and content, or is the content hosted somewhere else. I can host the videos for $9.95 a month at dreamhost with unlimited bandwidth, but am also looking into Amazon S3 for them.

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In reply to Tom Wootton

Re: What server to use

by Grant Mucha -

With a server like that 500 shouldnt be a problem. We have about that however I have also done some performance tuning.

Yes we have everything one one server right now. However, we have discussed amazon S3 simply because of its distributed network. Athough I suspect it will cost a lot more than 9.99 per month once you get a decent amount active learners.

I have actually been wondering what it would cost to run moodle entirely using Amazon. Including Amazon RDS...

Also I suspect our scenerios are similar. Our content is accessed through the internet vs a local network. Which is good for starters like us! As long as we can spread out each server request we will be able to handle a lot more users vs local area university that has hundreds of students trying to login at the same time.

And we are using version 2.0.2

 

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In reply to Grant Mucha

Re: What server to use

by Tom Wootton -

I completely forgot to mention that I too am using 2.02 which so far uses way more resources than 1.9 according to what I have read.

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In reply to Grant Mucha

Re: What server to use

by Renaat Debleu -

I was testing Moodle2 on Amazon (one year free tier). The results with a locally installed MySQL server were not bad. But I wanted to see the performance of the RDS option.

So I opted for the free Xeround tryout. This service is incredibly slow. The new installation of the Moodle database took almost 2 hours (117 minutes exactly) and generated more than 480 warnings! Unworkable

 

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In reply to Grant Mucha

Re: What server to use

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
Have you checked the performance documentation http://docs.moodle.org/en/Performance ?

In the price category 100 - 150 Euro per month you can get a powerful dedicated server. Without knowing how your course numbers grow, for the 1000 users at the beginning you won't need a separate machine for the DBMS.

The point is, peak usage decide on the resources, not the number of registered users. Also RAM is often the bottle neck. So invest on that. 8 GB is much different from 4 GB when it comes to a synchronous on-line exam.
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