Need help to decide server configuration

Need help to decide server configuration

by Akash Dobaria -
Number of replies: 3

Hello all,

I really need help as I belong to non-computer background and I need moodle for my small school. I'll explain a scenario here:

- There will be max. 500 concurrent users. (Usually 200 concurrent users at a time.)

- Around 200 users might access video-audio file concurrently.

- The whole moodle will have around 5,000 pages of data, around 500 video files, 500 flash animations and around 200 3D animations.


The moodle will be hosted on dedicated server. I needed help to decide what kind of configuration should my server must have in order that users can access it smoothly.

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In reply to Akash Dobaria

Re: Need help to decide server configuration

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

Moving to Hardware and Performance...

I suggest you have a search for (lots of) similar threads in this forum.

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In reply to Akash Dobaria

Re: Need help to decide server configuration

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

I'll say what I usually say... you have a school with 500 pupils. And you say you will have 200 users accessing the site *concurrently*. That sounds highly unlikely to me. Can you explain how you arrived at that figure / what you think it means?  

I would normally suggest a concurrency figure (I define that as web server processes active in memory at the same time) of around 5-10% as a typical starting point. 

Other than that, an "off the shelf" small server will be fine. You just need to work out how much disk space you need (we can't tell you that). If you can afford SSDs all the better. The only possible issue with materials is video. Video can be a nightmare as there is no reliable 'standard' for video on the web. What will work reliably on some devices won't work on others. This is the trickery that sites like YouTube, Vimeo and dedicated media servers get around. 

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In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Need help to decide server configuration

by Rick Jerz -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers
I agree with what Howard is saying. My small moodle has around 150 students in it.  At any one point in time, I might see 5 to 10 students in it while I am in.  That these students are "concurrently" hitting buttons is very unlikely.

Having said this, I do remember a time when I used Moodle to give an exam in class.  At the beginning of class I told all 40 students to login to Moodle and begin their exam.  I had a small hosted server at the time, and it actually took two to four minutes for all 40 students to get logged in.  But then my Moodle was fine.

So if you had a similar situation with 200 students, maybe they would all be "concurrent."

My bigger concern is with your videos.  I used to have my videos on the same server as my moodle.  I had to move them to a separate server because my Moodle was slowing down when students were streaming my videos.  There might be some server-side settings to alleviate (or tweak) this problem, but I am not that skilled of a "server" admin.  I am just a professor.

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