Hardware and performance

I'm very well thankyou.  I'm probably not writing any more books (never say never) as they are out of date so quickly. I spent my time more usefully writing documentation - https://docs.moodle.org and videos https://www.youtube.com/user/moodlehq (and other stuff) I didn't reply to your hosting question as it's not really my area.

These are perfectly reasonable questions but I don't think you are going to get a sensible answer. Or rather, it depends.

You might want to start by getting some quotes off Moodle Partners. You sometimes see this option mentioned as "expensive" but you get what you pay for. This, generally, gives you a fully supported site on a server dedicated to Moodle run by experts. The commitment and amount of control will depend on the company you choose and the type of subscription you take. 

You should not forget about backups. A proper backup regime is an expensive thing to facilitate and many cheaper options are cheap because they don't back up your data. Make sure about this!

Oh, and please don't post the same question in more than one forum. Ask the moderator to move it if it's in the wrong place. 

Like Howard has already stated ... many factors so no one answer (no one size fits all) - but will share one senario concerning a ISD (live in Texas - Independent School District) ...

Truth in disclosure ... am the outsourced tech that remotely supports ...

ISD - serves a students population of about 19,000 students with three high schools, four middle schools and 11 elementary schools. about 2,000 employees.  Numbers taken from
an ISD About Us web page.

high speed internet access in every classroom with a student/computer    ratio of 2:1 and is the first district to go wireless.  2 of the three High Schools have a high percentage of student enrolled in concurrent and AP classes earning college credit while still in high school (note: via Video Conferencing systems which may/may not have a CMS/LMS.
NOTE: their staff server has courses like "Social Studies Resources for ALL Teachers".
Courses like that have grown so large, the 'normal' backup process cannot complete.
Those courses have to be backed up manually using php scripts in admin/cli/.
And while they can be backed up, there is not year a 'restore' script to be able to
restore such a course.  When asked why ... contact said that access to those resources located on the States servers were sometimes in-accessible - circuit issues or bandwidth usage issues - thus a massive collection of those resources were provided via Moodle.

multiple instances of Moodle: 1 Elem for multiple campuses, 4 for Middle Schools, 3 for High Schools.   Another Moodle server for Staff - professional development
ISD does have a Google Domain but has not totally integrated Google and Moodle
One HS below uses links to the GDomain but users authenticate via LDAP even though a Google Oath2 authentication is available (server techs are not syncing LDAP with Google Domain yet)


MS users per campus: 1197, 2346, 560, 1942
HS users per campus: 728, 2001, 239
Staff server: 2623 This implementation does have Google Authentication but only 9 users
are using it - most others are LDAP.   Links to the Google Domain used in the site.
ISD has not migrated their Email to Google and all 9 of the users are using their gmail.com address in the Moodle.

Servers are RHEL 6 locally hosted and they "contract" with me to maintain the Moodles/OS.
Internal Network/Server techs have a heavy work load.  Such a setup does mean, from time to time, coordination with various internal network/server folks ... DNS, Firewall, Backup boxes, LDAP authentication, EMail/SMTP services, etc..   From my viewpoint sometimes difficult to get cooperation.

Cost: RHEL is commercial and does require renewal of 'entitlements' to get OS updates.  Am not privy to that cost but was told they have only Email support now.
NOTE: a CentOS server 6 based upon RHEL 6 is same stuff - cost $0 and can acquire the more recent versions of PHP/MySQL much eaiser/faster than a RHEL system.   Last year support cost for them $2500.00 approximately.   Also note: servers have Webmin and webmin has been scripted to 'take care of business'.  An Instructional Technologist with some web server moxie CAN administer and acquire upgrades to Moodles within series.

Specs of server used for campus sites (staff server is same):
Kernel and CPU     Linux 2.6.32-504.3.3.el6.x86_64 on x86_64
Processor information     Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5649 @ 2.53GHz, 4 cores
Real memory     2.38 GB used, 15.58 GB total
Virtual memory     33.73 MB used, 17.72 GB total
Local disk space     302.34 GB used, 474.57 GB total

Both run under VMWare

A study of usage ... ie, what modules, etc. is needed.   Hard to do.  By default every course has a forum but most teachers hide the forum and do not use it.   So when one looks at the listing of mods used, large number of forums listed is not an indicator of usage.

Don't know if that helps or not but ....

Oops ... responded in wrong forum.   Sorry bout that!

Usage of Moodle in this ISD has declined.   Reason: Edmodo provides a mobile client app that teachers like

Usage of Google Classroom comment:  GC is in it's first year.  Now that the close of the first year is near for many teachers, they are asking questions in a forum for which there has been no response ... like 'How do I backup my course and get it ready for next year?'   Have seen articles concerning GC which basically say the same thing ... it's lacking tools that other CMS/LMS systems already have but is improving and apparently listening to teachers requrest for features/additions.

As a former Secondary Teacher, I know that some students will push the boundaries of decent communications/usage of open systems.   Moodle has the ability to change a role for such students individually and restrict them from posting while still allowing them to view.  GC might have same but it's hard to find if it exist.  GC, however, is worth keeping an eye upon.

IMHO, Google Drive and Docs can be integrated/used without turning on the repos for Google Drive in Moodle.  Controls exist on both ends.   While that might deter some, think the younger generation of teachers won't find that very difficult to navigate and might even prefer it.  Students ... what can I say ... can't speak for  them but imagine they do like being empowered to some extent and 'somewhat' in control.  Too often I fear, schools restrict students not because of proven 'bad behavior' but for the 'potential bad behavior' a student *might/possibly* do.  Much depends upon a schools/campuses 'overall culture' (for lack of a better term).  I've seen small schools use Google/Moodle liberally and have not had instances of 'bad behavior' that required intervention (other than a verbal reminder).

'spirit of sharing', Ken