Moodle Resources

Moodle Resources

by Shyam S -
Number of replies: 8

Hi,

I am little new to this world.  

We have our courses running in Moodle 2.7.2.

We specifically use ONLY few resources in Moodle. To name them, 

1. SCORM [Each SCORM is less than 10MB ]

2. Quiz

3. Sharing PDF/Excel files

That's all.


We have a server configuration like this - 

  • Running on CentOS 
  • PHP - 5.5
  • MYSQL - 5.5
  • RAM 16GB
  • SCSI Drive


Now, I see that my server is not able to stand 150 users also. Load picks up like anything. SCORM file loads slow.

I feel that is very very low and not anywhere near to expectation.

Could you please help me where all I can look for performance improvement in our present Moodle configurations ? Also got an information that our Moodle file plugin.php is also consuming lot of load. Is there any way I can enable my Moodle to work faster ?

Any suggestion or direction will be of great help.

Thanks.

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In reply to Shyam S

Re: Moodle Resources

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

If you haven't done already, read this Performance_recommendations

It depends what those 150 users are doing. 150 users all doing a quiz can impose a huge load for example. Seeing as you mention file loads, are you sure your file subsystem is up to the job? Especially if this is a VM you can easily have problems if you aren't accessing real, physical disks directly. 

You may need to run some monitoring software on your server (I usually start with Munin) to work out what is going on when the load increases. 

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In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Moodle Resources

by Shyam S -

Hi Howard,

Thanks for your attention to my post.

Could you please help me to understand this - 

Seeing as you mention file loads, are you sure your file subsystem is up to the job? Especially if this is a VM you can easily have problems if you aren't accessing real, physical disks directly. 

Thanks again.


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In reply to Shyam S

Re: Moodle Resources

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

Just what I say really... Moodle is very dependent on the disk IO performance. This is fine if you are running it on its own box with fast disks in the box. If you are running it in some sort of VM then all bets are off. How much slower than "real" disks are your disks? In extreme cases your local disk can actually be a file on a server on the other end of some network cable!

I don't want to overstate this, but it is something to be aware of. 

I always recommend running Moodle on a 'proper' server because Moodle scales almost entirely as a factor of the hardware it runs on. Introducing anything to compromise the hardware can mean trouble. 

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In reply to Shyam S

Re: Moodle Resources

by Albert Ramsbottom -

What do you mean 150 users? Concurrently? Or 150 registered users?

As 150 concurrent users is a lot


Albert


PS look at the performance recommendations in the documentation, there are various tips in their

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In reply to Albert Ramsbottom

Re: Moodle Resources

by Shyam S -

Thanks Albert and Howard,

Yes, I have started taking a look at the link which you have shared.

I am taking about 150 users accessing mostly SCORM files in a time limit of 2-3 hours. When I see that my load starts going up and up. Only thing they do is access SCORM files. No chat/No Forums/No messages/No mails etc.

As a concept, I got an understanding that 1GB/50 concurrent users. If I go with this then we should be able to have (16GB*50)=800 users.

Is this a fair estimate ? 

I am also going to take your advice and start load testing. 

But need a general feedback from you all, looking the server configuration, can I expect to handle 1K-2K users accessing only SCORM ? 

If not, what should I do and what all hardware changes, I need to look at.

Thanks again.  


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In reply to Shyam S

Re: Moodle Resources

by Marcus Green -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Scorm is mainly a client side technology. The performance hit should come during load, so file size will matter. Once loaded, moving through a scorm is mainly on the client with some javascript calls to the server.

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In reply to Shyam S

Re: Moodle Resources

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

You don't really understand concurrent users - but don't feel bad, nobody does wink

It (effectively) means Apache (or whatever you are using) processes in memory *at the same time*. This means the maximum number of people who click on something in Moodle within a few seconds of each other (very approximately). So, 150 people accessing a SCORM resource over 2-3 hours which, as Marcus points out, is nearly entirely client side will have a concurrency nowhere near 150 (my guess would be 10-20). 

So, yes, you have an even bigger problem than you think. I would suggest that the number of users, in itself, isn't the issue. I have no idea what though - you are going to have to do lots more testing on the server to get some clues.

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