Buy a web server or use a web hosting company??? Help!

Buy a web server or use a web hosting company??? Help!

by Duncan Smith -
Number of replies: 15

Having played with moodle we have decided to use it for our school. However, I am unsure whether to set up a web server in our school or use a web hosting company to host it. We will have 1000 users, with around 35 courses. My concern in upload/download limits on a web hosting package causing issues. Would love to know how other schools have set this up. Whether you have bought a web server or simply uploaded to a web hosting package.

Many thanks in advance,

Dunks.

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In reply to Duncan Smith

Re: Buy a web server or use a web hosting company??? Help!

by Jeffery Watkins -
Dunk,

Consider using a Moodle Partner.  There are a couple of fine ones in the U.K..

Or, look for a server company that not only has robust hardware, but is also not trying to host as many sites as possible on a given server.  An example from whois.sc:

My site, CRTeacher is on a server with:

Website Status: Active
Reverse IP: Web server hosts 7 websites (reverse ip tool requires free login)
Server Type: Apache/1.3.33 (Unix) mod_auth_passthrough/1.8 mod_log_bytes/1.2 mod_bwlimited/1.4 PHP/4.3.9 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 mod_ssl/2.8.22 OpenSSL/0.9.7a
(Spry.com also uses Apache)


while anonymous Moodle site X:

Website Status: Active
Reverse IP: Web server hosts 1308 websites (reverse ip tool requires free login)
Server Type: Apache/1.3.33 (Unix) Chili!Soft-ASP/3.6.2 PHP/4.3.10 mod_ssl/2.8.22 OpenSSL/0.9.7a FrontPage/5.0.2.2635

Server load is one of the key issues to look at when choosing.

Hope this helps.

Jeff
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In reply to Jeffery Watkins

Re: Buy a web server or use a web hosting company??? Help!

by Art Lader -

> Consider using a Moodle Partner. 

Very, very good advice. We have never regretted it. IMHO (who are we kidding?) IMO

-- Art

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In reply to Duncan Smith

Re: Buy a web server or use a web hosting company??? Help!

by Robert Brenstein -
There are pros and cons for either, of course.

Having own server requires having someone who can maintain it, that is someone who licked some php and mysql and is familiar with either windows, osx, or linux (whatever you would run your server on) at admin level. Your "Mac" photo implies you guys have Macs around which make serving easier.

Having own server affords you customizing, tweaking, and patching Moodle as you wish or require, and using the version of Moodle that you want.

Having your own server must not mean purchasing new hardware. A hand-down computer might be fine to get you going. If it can't handle the load, you split service onto two computers or get a better one.

With 35 courses and 1000 students, you do not have that high requirements IMHO, so either solution will be fine. You can check the "servers and performance" forum where those things are discussed widely.

We are using the 1st generation G4 with OSX 10.3.9 with ram upgraded to 1 GB for 24 courses, 350 users. No sweat. Next semester we will have 120 courses and 1600-2000 users. I plan to swap the IDE drive for fast scsi drive and up ram to 2 GG when the server starts bogging down, switching to G5 later on if load keeps going up. But it will be a while before all teachers take full advantage of Moodle.

On the other hand, using service provider, particularly a Moodle partner, frees you from those technical issues. You just need to budget paying for the service.
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In reply to Robert Brenstein

Re: Buy a web server or use a web hosting company??? Help!

by N Hansen -
I would like to correct a point made here-one can tweak Moodle as much as one likes and use whatever version one wants with a hosted server. It doesn't require your own server to do this. The only time you might not be able to do that is if you were using a host with Fantastico.
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In reply to Duncan Smith

Re: Buy a web server or use a web hosting company??? Help!

by Larry Shield -
We host our own web server. You really don't need a massive server. We use a P4 running Windows 2000 Server software. Most traffic is asynchronous so no great stress is put on the server. Of course, hosting your own server does require more administrative time, but so far it hasn't been overly demanding. 
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In reply to Larry Shield

Re: Buy a web server or use a web hosting company??? Help!

by Duncan Smith -
Many thanks to all for your posts. A couple more questions!
We want pupils to access in school and from home so if we set up a web server it would be firewalled and static IP address etc so it can be accesssed. However, I would prefer not to have to get my hands dirty with this unless I need to.

Although we will have 1000 users/35 courses, it is very unlikely they will all be using moodle at the same time.

I am interested in the sort of traffic peoples moodle sites are receiving. Our main docs will be word, excel & powerpoint - not video/mp3 - but I don't know what sort of traffic we are likely to generate and if a web host gives 30GB of upload/download are we going to be stuffed!

Anyone have any stats on their useage?
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In reply to Duncan Smith

Re: Buy a web server or use a web hosting company??? Help!

by Larry Shield -
In all truth, if you create a web server you will be hacked, The main trick in not being hacked too badly is not to have a whizzbang system with (m)oodles of disk space. The hackers will look for greener pastures if your processor is somewhat slow and your disk space is on the small side.

As to speed, remember that students are working at the speed of typing and in computer terms is not really very fast.
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In reply to Duncan Smith

Re: Buy a web server or use a web hosting company??? Help!

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
"Many thanks to all for your posts. A couple more questions!"

How about the people who were answering your cross-posting in the other forum "Servers and Performance"? sad
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In reply to Duncan Smith

Re: Buy a web server or use a web hosting company??? Help!

by Robert Brenstein -
We want pupils to access in school and from home so if we set up a web server it would be firewalled and static IP address etc so it can be accesssed. However, I would prefer not to have to get my hands dirty with this unless I need to.

Some schools go over board and firewall all services but normally web services are allowed to go through firewalls without any problems, so unless you have overzelous computing people you should be fine.

You cross-posted on the performance forum. You should scan the earlier discussions there. Most of this has been covered at one time or the other.

I do not agree that any server is hacked. Small-fish servers are out of hacker scope unless there are some specific reasons to attack. Of course, the server has to be tight. It is true that all servers are scanned to find easy victims. If you worry about hacking, stay away from Windows or be ready to keep patching.

Some web hosting services will allow you to fiddle with Moodle program, some won't. You need to check and see what offers you get.

The actual usage (pattern, peaks, bandwidth) can't be really predicted/translated from other sites. Just get Moodle running whatever way is simpler to get it initially and see how it goes. You can always switch or upgrade.
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In reply to Duncan Smith

Re: Buy a web server or use a web hosting company??? Help!

by Bill Burgos -
Hi Duncan,

You can also ask a Moodle Partner to support your installation if you want to have your own. They would only need to have access to the server. Something that they would consult with you and your IT boss before proceeding.
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In reply to Bill Burgos

Re: Buy a web server or use a web hosting company??? Help!

by Valrick Welch -
My school has a moodle server at the central office. Can I use that server and make a server at our school so that I can still use moodle when the internet goes down and/or during heavy traffic times when everything slows down?
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In reply to Valrick Welch

Re: Buy a web server or use a web hosting company??? Help!

by Don Hinkelman -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers
Hi Valrick,
Unfortunately, you cannot easily switch servers when loads get high or when the internet goes down. That is because all the user data is also on that server. So you need to solve your high demand problems. I think your idea of making your own server at your school is a good one. You can control or at least be aware of the heavy traffic times locally. One central server for many schools will have many things happening that you have no control or no idea of what is going on. Also, speeds on a local LAN are much higher than through the internet.
Cheers,
Don
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In reply to Don Hinkelman

Re: Buy a web server or use a web hosting company??? Help!

by Valrick Welch -

Thanks Don, Can moodle be used on a lan only without access to the internet?  If so how can it be done?

Thanks

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In reply to Valrick Welch

Re: Buy a web server or use a web hosting company??? Help!

by Don Hinkelman -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers
>>Can moodle be used on a lan only without access to the internet?

Yes, you set up an "intranet".  An intranet is the same as the internet, except the traffic is just inside your institution.  You have no global IP address, just local IP addresses.  You use the same server software (apache, mysql and php) but set it up so your computers in your LAN just use Moodle internally.  You will need to get some server technical help to set this up, or look around for books on how to do it.   By the way, in the same way, you can set up Moodle to just run on your own laptop, too!  For development work, or for just talking to yourself.  smile
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In reply to Duncan Smith

Re: Buy a web server or use a web hosting company??? Help!

by Kent Bergstrom -
We had run a server ourselves in the school on a basic Fedora Core 3 system and the whole Apache,MySQL,Php setup for it. (Our first attempt was with SuSE)
This all worked fine for a while but we did get hacked from China and our server was used as a spamming forwarder for a while to the point that our provider was threatening to shut us down. It was quite a bit of administration issues.
Moved the server box to someones office who could keep a closer occasional eye on the unwarranted traffic in it and the motherboard failed. Took a backup drive with it...
So we moved everything over to another server location at a professional web server business that is run by one of my past students.
Long and short of it is that you can do most of anything you want in either situation. A server box of your own should cost you more than 500 and less than 1000 for something real nice to work with but, if you don't watch your backups and restoration process close you can really be a deep poo-poo.
Which means someone needs to be a somewhat full time administrator for the service. It gets to a bit much when your doing a lot of it yourself (believe me I know)
Hope this is helpful.
Kent
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