LAMP configuration for potentially 17.000 users

LAMP configuration for potentially 17.000 users

by Équipe TICEA -
Number of replies: 6

Hello,

     First, please excuse me for my poor english ... I'm french and can better write in spanish than in english.

     I'm the manager of a technical service for e-learning in our university (Toulouse, south of France ... famous city for Space Research and Aeronautic Industry), and pilot for the french e-learning university of law.

     We are actually migrating from WebCT 4.1 to Moodle 1.4.4. At the beginning, we were testing on a Bi-Pentium III 933, with 640Mb RAM, and 54 Gb HardDisk. We started the first act of the migration on this server.

     But this server must be able to receipt courses for 17.000 students of our Toulouse's university next year. And, for the french university of law project, we must buy another server for both Moodle (with MySql bases) and a CMS. So we are looking actually to buy 2 new servers, 1 dedicated to moodle (17.000 students) and another for Moodle and the CMS (approximatively same number of students).

     Can someone help ourselves for technical datas, or give us links to better appreciate minimum and optimum configurations. Must we separate database server and application one's.

Thanks for your answers

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Équipe TICEA

Re: LAMP configuration for potentially 17.000 users

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
17'000 students? That's serious stuff!

We had few discussions here (read the 10 top threads in this forum) on "big" sites - upto 2'500 users. You just can't linearly extrapolate that to 17'000 students, I'm afraid.

To my knowlege our moderator Martin Langhoff handles installations of this scale. Read his posting in the following thread http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=22681

Carefully read the paper at http://catalyst.net.nz/moodle/

I hope he will add more details here!
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: LAMP configuration for potentially 17.000 users

by Martin Dougiamas -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
17,000 is not extreme at all. I maintain several sites bigger than this, and there are larger ones around. The most important number is "peak simultaneous users", because not all the 17,000 will ever be using the site at once. Even then, the setup of the system and the activities and features chosen in courses makes a big difference.

Lots of RAM is important so you can take advantage of PHP, disk and MySQL caching.  Splitting the database to a dedicated server is a good way to increase performance, too.

The biggest single Moodle site in terms of raw user accounts so far is the Open Polytechnic in New Zealand which is maintained by Catalyst. Last news was that it has 35,000 users and 6000 courses.  Read some posts by Martin Langhoff for more details about how they've set it up.
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: LAMP configuration for potentially 17.000 users

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
The phrase "We had few discussions .." in my posting should have been "I had few discussions .." I stand corrected!

moodle.org itself is an example of a heavy site. I read something about 48'000 registered users and 100'000 postings during your upgrade to 1.5. That's marvelous. Still the figure "peak simultaneous users" of a community site is inherently different from a regimented school operation, I guess.

Presently we are in a pilot phase. Scalability will be a central issue when it comes to "official deployment". So I'm keen to know more on this subject. Many thanks for all the pointers!

Lastly, I was nicely surprised to get an answer from the creator and maintainer of the whole business - that is the spirit of Open Source!

Laurent,
Toulouse is not only famous for space research, wasn't it the base station of Saint-Exupéry? If I remember right Les Misérables "happened" there too.
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: LAMP configuration for potentially 17.000 users

by Équipe TICEA -

Thanks a lot Visvanath and Martin,

      That's right, 17.000 students is not a small group, even if this structure can't be compared with the moodle.org or the Open Politechnic one's. The peak simultaneous users shall be between 35 and 50 during the 2005-6 universitary year.

      We chose recently (april 12) your open source solution, and now start increasing the number of students and courses supported by the platform. Normally, in september 2005, all courses must be put in this new way of teaching (about 200 courses), and all distant students will learn with this system.

      First, we will use one server LAMP (and not 2 servers one dedicated to DataBase and other applicative), perhaps dual opteron with 4gb RAM (if we compare with other messages). I'm sure we will learn more in the future french MoodleMoot in Bretagne in June. And then, we will keep the contact for new evaluation of our needs.

     Finaly, yes, Visnavath, I said that Toulouse was very proud of its aeronautic industry (the A380 is the perfect example), but the city is very proud of its aeronautic history too, with Saint-Exupery (famous pilot and author of "Le Petit Prince"). But i don't know if "Les miserables" happened in Toulouse, even if Victor Hugo won 2 academic prices in Toulouse.

Laurent

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Équipe TICEA

Re: LAMP configuration for potentially 17.000 users

by Martín Langhoff -
> That's right, 17.000 students is not a small group, even if this structure can't be compared with the moodle.org or the Open Politechnic one's. The peak simultaneous users shall be between 35 and 50 during the 2005-6 universitary year.

> First, we will use one server LAMP (and not 2 servers one dedicated to DataBase and other applicative), perhaps dual opteron with 4gb RAM (if we compare with other messages). I'm sure we will learn more in the future french MoodleMoot in Bretagne in June. And then, we will keep the contact for new evaluation of our needs.

A one-server system for 35~50 users will be ok provided that you tune it appropriately. Depends on use, of course. Certain modules can put more pressure on the server (chat, for example).

> Finaly, yes, Visnavath, I said that Toulouse was very proud of its aeronautic industry (the A380 is the perfect example)

My father did his A340 course a few years ago in Toulouse. He really liked the place and found it rich in aeronautic history smile



Average of ratings: -
In reply to Martín Langhoff

Re: LAMP configuration for potentially 17.000 users

by Équipe TICEA -

Thanks for all

     I think we will use chat at "peak simultaneous users". That's why we choose a 4gb RAM server. But it normally won't occure usually. We will customize the server for higher disponibility with your help if possible, and the help of the ENST (Bretagne). September may be a very difficult transition for us between WebCT and Moodle, but we prepare it since april the 12th.

     When you speek about A340, i'm sure you know it's the longest plane in the world (in its A340-600 series), more than a Boeing 747. We are very proud of our aeronautic industry, with especially Concorde.

Laurent

Average of ratings: -