Hello,
I would like to share with you this weird problem to see if anyone could shed some light:
As you already know, I upgraded our main site to Moodle 2.2 last week. This site has been set up in a server which has 8 GB Ram memory, 2 core processors, 90 GB c:\ drive storage, and the Moodle site is in a F drive, which has 400 GB storage.
Our Moodle site is small: we have around 100 users, database is, after the upgrade, 50.000 Kbs. Our MySQL server and Php manager (We are using a Windows 2008 server/IIS7) are in the same server.
After the upgrade, our Moodle site started to get really slow when users click on links for courses or resources. Because our site is hosted in Kuwait, we have always had problems of slowness since this project started due to the Internet connection of our educational partner in Kuwait.
I have created a clon site of our main site in our test server. The test server has lower hardware requirements: 2 GB RAM memory, 60 GB C:\drive, 2 core processors.
Our clone site is an exact replica of the main site: same database, same moodle and moodle_data folders.
The php version and MySQL versions are the same. Php.ini and my.ini are the same for both sites, because the test server was set up as a sort of ‘staging server’.
Surprisingly, the test size is faster than the main site.
I have downloaded Rammap -http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ff700229.aspx- to monitor the allocation of RAM memory in both servers:
Mysql.exe and php-cgi.exe use values within normal limits in both servers.
The only differences I can see between both servers are:
- The number of php-cgi.exe processes are different.
Is it because the number of Moodle sites are different in each server? What does php-cgi.exe really do?
- The main site uses SSL (https) and we have an electronic certificate which is in order, while the test site don’t (http protocol and not electronic certificate).
Could this be the cause?
Another possibility would be that the firewall settings are different for each server, but the network technician of our educational partner in Kuwait assures me that the firewall rules are the same.
I have also asked the IT team in Kuwait about the SSL and electronic certificates, but this was done by some else who no longer works for the organisation, and the new technician does not know much about the servers.
Could you please advise me about which other difference between both servers should I look?
Users are complaining the upgrade for this slowness and it is a shame that, with all the new exciting plug-ins that I have installed for September, this pitfall is going to undermine all my hard work.
Thank you very much for your advice.