Hello,
since long time we are struggling with a problem to backup and restore Moodle courses which are bigger than 2GB under Windows server. This problem persist on Moodle 3.1.2 instance, under Windows 2012 R2, IIS, PHP 5.6.25. At least with the 32 bit PHP version it is not possible to backup Moodle courses larger than 2GB.
Based on the information posted on moodle.org:
"Windows is not suitable for large Moodle installations because PHP for
Windows does not support 64-bit integer numbers, even if it is running
on 64-bit Windows in 64-bit mode. One of the problems is that Moodle may
fail to access data if there are more than 2 billion records in one
database table because the id column is too big for integers. Another
limitation is a maximum file size of 2GB, which can cause problems (for
example) when making backups of large courses. Please consider a
different operating system with full 64-bit support for very large
installations."
Due to fact that the PHP 7 ist still not
fully tested and supported under Moodle 3.x we have decided to use the
PHP 32bit, 5.6.25 version in FastCGI-process under IIS, and PHP 64bit
version 7 only in cron backup script.
And...with this configuration we are
able to backup courses larger than 2 GB. Unfortunately the limitation
persist when we are trying to restore large courses. The only way to restore them, is to select some activities
and materials so that overall there will be less than 2GB of data and
conduct the restoration in two, three separate steps.
Thus my question: is it currently planned to make some adjustments for the restore function in the fortcoming Moodle version 3.2 or 3.3., so that it will be possible to restore large courses under Windows server with IIS and PHP 7 on board?
Best regards
Paul
