Hardware and performance

Hi

> Looking through these Moodle forums it seems that in the past some people have had some negative experiences with running PHP and Moodle on the Sun Solaris platform. Is that still true today?

You are right. Read the discussion "Solaris or not Solaris" https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=318647.

> We are largely a "Microsoft/Windows" shop, with limited Unix resources.

Why Unix then (Solaris is also Unix).

> My only experience with Unix is on Ubuntu (which I really like).

For a recent much related enquiry, see "Moodle Newbie" https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=328930.

Hi Pedro,

Firstly, I'm glad to hear that your current install has been running well all these years

So your IT architects have made two options available to you:

• A more recent version of Windows; and
• Oracle Solaris

I have previously run Moodle on Oracle Solaris, and I would not recommend it. In fact I would personally recommend against it for the following reasons:

• lack of available PHP packages easily available;
• performance issues with DB drivers;
• manageability (unless you already have L337 Solaris skillz.

We ended up running Debian Linux on our SunSparc T1000s because making PHP run properly on Solaris was just a nightmare.

To be honest it's best to stick with what you know. I would normally recommend going down the Linux route (Ubuntu or Debian are my preferences), but if you're a Windows shop, stay with Windows.

Andrew

If they specifically called it 'Sun' Solaris, that OS may not be supported anymore. Sun Microsystems hasn't existed for many years, they were (unfortunately) assimilated into The Borg, otherwise known as Oracle, and most of their products ruined or terminated. This still makes me sad; I'd dedicated my early career to Sun products and loved them...

If their reasons for suggesting this are for commercial support, and that's clearly a valid reason, Oracle also offer their own Linux distro which may be a better choice. Alternatively, Red Hat offer commercial support agreements for their Enterprise Linux, so this may also be worth a look, too. Both of these are not going to be a major jump for an existing Solaris admin, 

If I would have been in your place, then would have preferred the platform that I am already familiar with, that being Windows. It is getting old, no doubt about it for you're using IIS 6/6.5, and getting your moodle running on latest available being IIS 8.5 coming with Server 2012 R2 is a wise choice, for you'll be jumping over 3 generations of IIS development.

IIS has really improved specially  in version 7 in terms of security, and IIS 8/8.5 was performance tuned with special concentration on Application Pools. IIS 10 that is coming with Server 2016 hasn't been worked upon much as if compared to previous gens, only new thing you'll find is support for HTTP/2, rest more tuned towards Hyper-V development.

Where you mentioned, VM. I assume you meant a Virtual Server, now there are slight confusions or call it mix ups. There are two types of Virtual environments, one that has layer of O/S in between hardware and the actual environment (Oracle Virtual Box, VMWare Workstation etc.) are examples of these, issue with these are, layer of O/S so performance isnt as good as expected. Then there is 2nd type hypervisors where environment directly interacts with hardware layer (VMWare vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V etc.) are examples, In these types, because environment is directly interacting with hardware, so you can expect absolute performance like you're actually running things within operating system. So if you are going  to setup on a VPS, then it's OK in terms of performance, while running a virtual machine within an O/S is not recommended.

Rest everyone has already shared with you their personal experiences with Solaris.

Bad plan... we used to use Solaris and had all sorts of issues. I would say that it's no longer properly supported plus nobody uses it any more. 

Use Ubuntu or CentOS like everyone else or stick with Windows that you are familiar with and know works. 

Hi Pedro Martins De Torre,
How did you get benefit of Ms Biztalk?
have you tried to consume Moodle web service from Biztalk?

I am wondering if there is any possible way to integrate Moodle through MS Biztalk? 
How is it possible to benefit from MS Biztalk for integrations and sending request to Moodle web service?

Anyhelp is appreciated!

Thanks.