Improve Moodle performance

Improve Moodle performance

by Floyd Saner -
Number of replies: 5

I've run into a situation where there is poor Moodle performance, especially when a group of students take an exam.  

The site is on a virtual Apache server.  The database is on a separate server.  I know more details are needed but I don't have all that right now.

What I need now is general advice on the following:

  • Currently running Apache. It was suggested that nginx might be a bit faster.  Any comments on that?

  • Currently using DSO as the PHP processor. It was suggested that fastCGI might be better. Any comments on that?

  • Is it better to work at tuning what we have (Apache/DSO) or to first move to one or both of the options above.  Where would you begin?

Thanks,

Floyd

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In reply to Floyd Saner

Re: Improve Moodle performance

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

It would help to understand how poor your performance is vs. what your expectations are.

Two things - firstly, I seriously doubt changing either of those will make a massive difference on any kind of system (although you may make marginal improvements). Secondly, I can't recommend randomly changing *anything* without first understanding where the bottleneck in your system actually lies. 

Your effort is best directed and finding out why your performance is not up to expectations so that you can make informed decisions. 

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In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Improve Moodle performance

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
+1

People will say this is faster, that is faster. There is just no point buying them unless you know what is slow. Kind of obvious, right, would you take medicine without diagnosis?

The starting point is in the header of this forum, _only during you write the new discussion_ https://moodle.org/mod/forum/post.php?forum=94 !
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In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Improve Moodle performance

by Floyd Saner -

Thanks for your response, Howard.  Your reply is helpful and confirms that the team needs to do more analysis and testing before making wholesale changes.  I am fully aware that my questions were very vague, but I'm trying to lead a group of people through a process to solve the problem, and I do not have deep server expertise.  

I contribute a lot to other areas of the Moodle forums and often get frustrated with vague questions. Now I find myself on the other side of the question-answer equation, so I appreciate your patience and accommodation. 


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In reply to Floyd Saner

Re: Improve Moodle performance

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

It's often hard to know where to start with situations like this. I would encourage you to gather any information you can possibly find. My starting point is usually to make sure the server is running something like 'munin' which collects and graphs a large number of server parameters over time. This by itself can often point you in the right direction.

Even if, as often happens, you find nothing obviously wrong (low load, no memory issues etc) and Moodle is still slow it is still *something* in that you have eliminated a whole range of possibilities. 

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