Using CDN/Cloud Hosting for Moodle Images, Hosting Moodledata on Cloud Hosting

Using CDN/Cloud Hosting for Moodle Images, Hosting Moodledata on Cloud Hosting

by Jodil Davis -
Number of replies: 3

Dear Forum Members,

I am a relatively new user of Moodle Platform and I have got some queries regarding it. We have got Moodle installed on a single server setup and we are looking to scale it soon as we have got increased number of users using it. So I have got some questions related to that. We are planning to achieve scalability through following steps.

1) We are planning to separate all videos by hosting them on Video Hosting websites. 

2) Seperate the database from existing server by hosting them on a Cloud SQL service like Google, AWS, Microsoft Azure etc.

3) Host images on a CDN or on any cloud hosting service like Google, AWS, Microsoft Azure etc.

4) Seperate 'moodledata' folder by hosting them on Cloud (Google, AWS, Microsoft Azure etc)


But I am not sure about steps 3 & 4. So I am looking forward to get some advice from fellow members of this forum. Thanks for taking time to read my post.


Kind Regards,

Joe

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In reply to Jodil Davis

Re: Using CDN/Cloud Hosting for Moodle Images, Hosting Moodledata on Cloud Hosting

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

Why? 

Or in more detail...

1. Good idea. Video is a pain and is better served from a site that specialises in this

2-4)  Why not just do the whole thing on AWS? I'm not sure what problem you are trying to fix. You run the (very likely) risk of ending up with huge performance issues due to latency.

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In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Using CDN/Cloud Hosting for Moodle Images, Hosting Moodledata on Cloud Hosting

by Jodil Davis -

Hi Howard,

Many Thanks for your reply. We are currently running Moodle on a Virtual Server (Windows Server 2012 R2, Intel Xeon 2.8GHZ, 24GB Ram) and this infrastructure is kindly provided to us by one of your partner organisation. Although we we want to scale our moodle hosting we want to keep our running costs to minimum. So I thought that we could run the moodle on the same server and seperate our database, media and other static resources to Cloud Hosting so that we can scale it keeping our costs to minimum. So if I just host the Database on Cloud and keep images and moodledata folder on the local server will it still have performance issues. I am a novice person when it comes to DevOps so please execuse me if you think my query doesn't make any sense.


Many Thanks,

Joe


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In reply to Jodil Davis

Re: Using CDN/Cloud Hosting for Moodle Images, Hosting Moodledata on Cloud Hosting

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 might work but you are, effectively, accessing your database over the public internet. The performance will be unpredictable, poor, or probably both. There is also a huge security issue. 

It's fine separating Moodle's web server from the database server but, I would suggest, only if they are sat in a rack next to each other. I strongly suspect you will have serious performance issues with your solution. 

Having Moodledata remotely hosted will be even worse. You would also need a local solution for your caches. Sounds like far too much trouble to me.

If you want to host Moodle in a cloud VPS then go ahead, but put everything in the same place. 

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