There is no simple answer to this question, though the lack of video or audio does help simplify matters. I regularly have about 18 students take a quiz with about 5 questions on my £50 a year shared hosting solution with no problems.
Now I believe that the number of questions in a quiz is not much of an influence on performance but perhaps someone more knowledgable could comment. I am using is Moodle 2.3 and in theory Moodle 2.4 has the potential to be faster since it has a thing called the MUC or Moodle Universal Cache. I have not actually found the way in to look at the settings of that yet. What operating system are you intending to use.
I haven't done this yet, but am considering setting up my own server using Apache on my Ubuntu.
Another option would be to go with GoDaddy's VPS (Linus or Windows).
Several summers ago, I gave a quiz in class, using Moodle, to approximately 50 students that had 40 questions in it. I am quite sure that I was still running my Moodle from a hosted server (similar to Marcus). Of course, I kept my fingers crossed as these 50 students all began the quiz within a 5 minute timeframe. It worked! On the tail end of this quiz, there was more dispersion of finish times as different students completed their quiz at different times. When the two-hour quiz time approached, I think that I had only 5 to 10 students who submitted at approximately the same time.
For a long quiz (like 50 questions), it is recommended to break this down into smaller pieces (like 10 per page) so that when students hit the "Next" button, Moodle will do an intermittent save.
I don't this that in general the number of questions in a quiz affects the server load much. In the Moodle docs, it describes how "concurrent usage" does. So, if you said to all 50 student "Hit the start button right now", that would put a big load on the server.
You might want to consider letting students begin the exam within a wider timeframe. You might say, for example, "You can show up between 10AM and 10:30AM to begin your exam." Yes, your logistics of administering an exam might not allow this.
When I give exams online, I actually have giving students anywhere from one to three days (3 for an exam that spans a weekend) to begin their exam, but then I make these exams be timed so that once a student begins the exam, they only have one hour to complete it (as an example). This allows me to spread the load on my (now, virtual) server.
I haven't set up a server yet, but didn't even consider shared hosting as I thought my 50 students using Moodle concurrently would definitely cause the server to crash. Your example is proof that shared hosting could work in my case.
Which web hosting provider did you have?
At the time, I had a GoDaddy hosted server, but their higher end version (I think their Ultimate). I was also running Moodle 1.9 (pre-2.0). However, today, GoDaddy's hosted server is not sold with a new enough version of mySQL, so you can't run Moodle 2.4 on their hosted servers. Around two years ago, I upgraded to a GoDaddy virtual server, and that is what I am still using.
Over the last year, I did experiment with another company, TMDHosting.com. I tried their virtual servers, which work fine, but have less memory for the money than GoDaddy, so I am sticking with GoDaddy right now for my production Moodle.
I do have Moodle 2.4 running on TMDHosting's hosted account (their $5 per month product). I keep all of my videos their in order to balance my load on my virtual server. I think my videos were consuming too much CPU and slowing my Moodle down, occasionally. TMDHosting does not recommend running Moodle on their hosted servers, but they were able to load a more current version of PHP and mySQL on it, and then I was able to get a fresh install of Moodle working (www.rjerz2.com/moodle24). I use this server to load fresh copies of Moodle, so that I can experiment. I do not know if these servers would have problems with 50 students, but you might want to give it a try.
Running Moodle on a GoDaddy VPS can be a little tricky, and Visvanath is correct to be concerned, because he sees many folks struggling. But I don't know what other alternatives one has at $50-$60 per month. TMDHosting was going to cost me around $70 per month for a virtual server that was going to be comparable to what GoDaddy provides.
By the way, all of my Moodles have been on Linux.
I haven't set up a server yet, but didn't even consider shared hosting as I thought my 50 students using Moodle concurrently would definitely cause the server to crash. Your example is proof that shared hosting could work in my case.
Which web hosting provider did you have?
I had HostGator's cheap $8/month shared hosting. With 30 students simultaneously taking a 40 question quiz, i'd experience time-outs, long delays in postbacks via Moodle 2.2
The problem is when all the students request a page at the same exact time, it kills the server. That's your main worry. If you knew that all 30 students would never press a button at the same time, you would never crash the server.
Shared servers (around $8/month) are a crap shoot, you never know how overloaded they are, sometimes goDaddy will put you on a fast shared server at the start, then after a couple of months move you to the oversold one that is really slow.
Then the hard sell for an expensive $60/month VPS will come in the email once you start having problems.
I like what you have said and concur. The other thing about a hosted server is that they often times limit the size of your mySQL database.
A hosted server could be a good way to begin, and I still think for one class, 50 students, it might work. Yes, if all 50 (or as you said, just a few) hit the Enter key at the same time, there could be problems.
Might you mind me asking how you ended up? Did you get rid of your HostGator server? Did you upgrade to a VPS?
I like what you have said and concur. The other thing about a hosted server is that they often times limit the size of your mySQL database.
A hosted server could be a good way to begin, and I still think for one class, 50 students, it might work. Yes, if all 50 (or as you said, just a few) hit the Enter key at the same time, there could be problems.
Might you mind me asking how you ended up? Did you get rid of your HostGator server? Did you upgrade to a VPS?
No, Hostgator has either really cheap hosting or very expensive. So you are either paying $8/month or $70 a month for VPS. It seems that they are guilty of the bait and switch tactics. The $30/month hosting is basically barebones Linux and they don't even give you CPanel. You basically have shell access and have to install apache and other things that way.
I wish that these hosts would display CPU/RAM stats. Then you could analyze what's happening.
I was hoping that Moodle 2.4 would have drastic improvement in Quiz module, but I only see maybe a 10% decrease in CPU usage...... still it's only early..
Hmmm, interesting. What do you view as your alternatives? Do you think that you could handle a VPS, if it were cheaper?
