Getting my school to host a Moodle Server

Getting my school to host a Moodle Server

by James Steerpike -
Number of replies: 11

As a teacher, I have been running Moodle on a shared host for half a year and I think I  have gained the basic skills to install and  administer Moodle. Now I want to persuade my school to host an installation and I am wondering how hard it would be for them.

I have a discarded machine about 7 years old with 4Gb of Ram which should be equivalent or better than my shared host. I will configure this myself but IT will have to add it to the school network and assign it an IP address. I would want to be able to putty into this machine for maintenance without wanting access to anything else.

IT may surprise me by offering full support and a new server but I expect some resistance. Technically it sounds straightforward but is it is not an area I know much about.

Could anyone comment on how difficult it would be to add a Moodle server to an existing web site?


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In reply to James Steerpike

Re: Getting my school to host a Moodle Server

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

Seeing as you're asking... setting up Moodle is easy enough but running a web server (especially in a school) is a responsibility you may well not want. 

I would advice you to "sell" Moodle properly and have it set up on a properly maintained server. Do you really want to worry about security, updates etc.?

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In reply to James Steerpike

Re: Getting my school to host a Moodle Server

by Emma Richardson -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers

Really, this should not be hard for IT at all.  You will need some linux expertise if you are going to run the server, but if you are technically minded, it is not that hard to manage.  Moodle was how I started with linux and I was up and running in a day and have never looked back.  However, I would ask for a new server if possible.  It is always nice to start with reliable hardware and will give your teachers a better experience if you do not run into unnecessary slowdowns.

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In reply to Emma Richardson

Re: Getting my school to host a Moodle Server

by James Steerpike -

Thanks guys. I do have some IT experience and have been running a Moodle site with over 350 active users on shared hosting for a few months now.  I have worked with Linux before and I am getting some more experience with a  VPS install last week and a Raspberry Pi Jessie install tonight.  The security is my biggest concern and I intend to keep the LAMP stack patched with apt.

The new server would be nice but I do have a spare machine, so I can configure and test. Working with the IT staff may be a challenge due to language problems so the more I can do the better. Perhaps I will meet them with the Pi and my development Moodle in my pocket and ask them if they can hook it up.

I imagine the process is to install  the machine on to the network, somehow they assign it an IP address and I access it through SSH and FTP. At this stage I will be the only teacher so it shouldn't be too difficult. Otherwise I may have to spring out for a decent VPS but as well as the cost there are other considerations why it is not ideal  to host on a foreign server.

As for selling - I think selling Moodle as a concept is impractical in this situation. What will work is seeing the way it can be used. No idea where this will end up but I still see this a trial - even though my students have already worked with it for a whole semester and Moodle grades will make up 30% of their final mark. At any rate I have picked up a few skills.


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In reply to James Steerpike

Re: Getting my school to host a Moodle Server

by Emma Richardson -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers

I haven't used Pi myself but have seen a few forum posts from people having problems with it.  However, that does not mean that many have not been able to use it successfully.  I use Debian for my Moodle server but consult on several using Centos and a lot of people use Ubuntu.  

If you have access to the server, you can set up ssh access yourself (apt-get install ssh-server).  You will just need an externally accessible ip address and a dns name assigned to the server.  

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In reply to Emma Richardson

Re: Getting my school to host a Moodle Server

by James Steerpike -

The GIT stage is pretty slow so won't finish until tomorrow. I haven't managed a functional  nginx Moodle on the pi yet but Apache is fairly straightforward. One good thing - using the Lite Jessie distribution means no GUI and all command line.

I just use the Pi for configuration - although last year I used it in class as a webserver. The real box my wife has decided is not fit for her use is a quad  core with 4 gigs of ram and a respectable Windows experience score.  Just it is a little heaver to carry into the IT department and the process of integrating a Moodle server should be the same regardless of server size.

The DNS part was something I found a little difficult.  A job for tomorrow.

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In reply to James Steerpike

Re: Getting my school to host a Moodle Server

by AL Rachels -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

I have a Pi 3 running NGINX, PostgreeSQL, PHP7, and Moodle 3.3. It is on my internal network so no public access. In fact I also have a couple of other single Pi setups as well as a couple of Pi clusters running Moodle. I eventually hope to use one of the clusters to replace my 5 year old home server...no moving parts to wear out.  big grin Recently just been too busy with other projects...new workshop and development work on two plugins I maintain.

If you want, I can place my install notes where they can be accessed. If your are interested, send me an email at drachels at drachels dot com and I will move them and tell you how to access them.

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In reply to AL Rachels

Re: Getting my school to host a Moodle Server

by James Steerpike -
I would be interested. Just found out MySql on Pi has stopped working.  Totally my fault as I have been lazy on shutdowns - pulling the plug on a Moodle server is not a smart idea but without a keyboard or display it is tempting to just pull the cord. I do have a phone app which allows a shutdown command so must use in the future. On the bright side - an opportunity to find out how to fix a problem.
Are you using a SD card on your PI? There was a suggestion the read/write cycle could cause early failure.  Conscious of card failure because I bought  a couple of cheap generic 8 Gb cards and they failed within a week.   I have a Pi 3 with a 32 gig card so I will have to get some  more cards.
The install notes are just what I need. The beauty of the Pi is no gui so it is just a CLI. The clusters sound good but a bit beyond me at this stage.

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In reply to James Steerpike

Re: Getting my school to host a Moodle Server

by AL Rachels -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

I would be interested. - I will try to move them all before the end of today and let you know.

without a keyboard or display it is tempting to just pull the cord - I try to make sure I keep a PuTTY window open so I can tell mine to shutdown, but I admit to cutting power sometimes and forgetting to issue shutdown first. I have Ansible on the clusters and can shut all the Pi's in them down with just one command. Need to add all the other Pi's so I can run them via Ansible also

Are you using a SD card on your PI? - Yes, mostly high end PNY 64 GB and some of them have really been hammered with multiple total wipe and system rewrite. So far my only card failures have been SanDisk cards. I started to experiment with using a thumb drive and a SSD Drive plugged into a USB socket, but got sidetracked by the Moodle 3.3 QA test cycle and haven't got back to them yet.

The beauty of the Pi is no gui so it is just a CLI. - I do sometimes do a full Jessie install instead of a Lite install, when I'm in a hurry. Makes setting up a Moodle with unoconv working go quicker as the Lite has to install so many missing things...all the LibreOffice stuff. I have a small 7 inch monitor and Bluetooth keyboard setup that I swap from Pi to Pi when needed, then go headless.

As for the clusters, they are just fun to play with and were my birthday present for this year. One thing I've learned from them is I now see why big Moodle sites do not upgrade as often as I normally do.

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In reply to James Steerpike

Re: Getting my school to host a Moodle Server

by Jamie Kramer -

In my experience, some of the concerns the school might have:

  • who is responsible for hardware failure
    • given a 7 yr old machine, or any server for that matter, hardware will fail
    • they may be resistant to assume responsibility for a hardware build that is not in alignment with their current standards
  • security
    • they may have concern about the security impact of adding a server to their DMZ that is maintained by someone outside of their IT team
    • they may insist that it needs to go on a separated network, to insulate the server that is maintained by someone else from affecting their other servers/services
    • they may insist upon specific policies, such as weekly security updates, for instance
      • or specific Operating System or Linux distribution requirements
      • requirement for specific host-based firewall on the server
  • backup plan
    • who will do the backups, where will the data go
    • they might insist that data backups need to use existing school backup services
  • long term maintenance
    • if Moodle and your server hardware are not "officially supported", but only by you, and if there is wide adoption, there may be concerns about long term support and maintenance in the event of staff turnover (like if you ever leave). It may raise concerns about who/how they would take care of it in that case.


I'm sure there are many more, but those were just a couple that come to mind if I were in charge of managing IT and servers. I hope it helps and I hope you are successful!

Jamie


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In reply to Jamie Kramer

Re: Getting my school to host a Moodle Server

by James Steerpike -
Good points Jamie. For the next semester It will be for only students taught by my wife and I.  Long term support will end when I go but maybe I have started something.

Perhaps the best solution is to leave the LAMP stack set up and maintenance to IT. I think most Moodle maintenance (including backups and installing plugins) could be done using Moodle itself so once the server was installed ( which I could assist on)  I would not require root access to the server. If required, I would go to IT.

That really simplifies the request. A LAMP server. A couple of hours with access to install Moodle.

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In reply to James Steerpike

Re: Getting my school to host a Moodle Server

by Jamie Kramer -

That sounds like a good approach.

Some server policies require that the web-root, where the PHP code is stored, should not be writable by the user under which PHP is executing. This necessarily limits the ability to install plugins from within the Moodle front-end. So it might be something to ask about.


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