Moodle site very slow from off premisis

Moodle site very slow from off premisis

by Jack B -
Number of replies: 13

I'll preface this with the fact that I have absolutely no idea how this system was setup.  I am a WAN engineer and had this dumped in my lap because the admin for our Moodle site is unable to troubleshoot this problem.  One of the sites in question, they all live on the same server is http://ecampus.gvboces.org.  On prem, it loads in no time, from off prem, you might as well do something else while you are waiting.  We have hundreds of other servers that have been NATd and have the same ports open to them (80, 443, we even tried opening this thing up to IP and no change) and those servers are totally fine.  Again I'm a network engineer so I've exhausted my troubleshooting trying to make this a WAN problem, it just doesn't seem to be the case.

The server specs(VM) are as follows:

4 sockets, 1 core per socket (2.4Ghz Xeon E5645)

4GB RAM

OS Drive 100GB (50% free)

Data Drive 100GB (56% free)

Windows server 2008R2, up-to-date as of today

Moodle 3.4.1

WAMP 3.1

Apache 2.4.27

mysql 5.7.19

php 7.1.9


that's about all I have.  I've disabled AV, there is no firewall in the way outside our WAN firewall, and this is a very robust network so I don't think this is a bandwidth problem.  

I know this is probably a multifaceted problem with a million variables but I really don't even know where to star.  Any help would be greatly appreciated!


Thanks,

John




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In reply to Jack B

Re: Moodle site very slow from off premisis

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
Hi

The site you mentioned came up at no time. [BTW, it is better to protect the name of the site.]

So it is in a VPS? Is the parameter $CFG->wwwroot identical to the site URL you posted?
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Moodle site very slow from off premisis

by Jack B -

we host the virtual environment ourselves onsite.  where do i find that parameter?

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In reply to Jack B

Re: Moodle site very slow from off premisis

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
So, you are the system administrator but have never installed Moodle? You have some homework ahead!

Start here https://docs.moodle.org/en/Installation_quick_guide
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Moodle site very slow from off premisis

by Jack B -

No I'm not the sys admin, I'm the WAN engineer so I have little to no experience with web servers.  Honestly, since this isn't really my area of expertise, I'm not planning on delving too deep into this.  at some point the folks who support this will have to figure this out since they have vastly more knowledge than i do.  I just need to make sure that it's not me, but the DNS issue is something I can take care of.

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In reply to Jack B

Re: Moodle site very slow from off premisis

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
So the system admin is missing? Even more grave. (The other person is the _moodle_ admin, I understood.)

$CFG->wwwroot is a line in $moodle/config.php.

Yes, you are better off following Usman. He is our Windows expert. Other than opening a Windows 10 in VirtualBox if I must, I do not interact with Microsoft.
wink

Reminder: You might want to your real domain hidden. (Ask the moderator, you can't edit your post any more.)
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Moodle site very slow from off premisis

by Jack B -

well i found that config file and it is set to:


$CFG->wwwroot = 'http://ecampus.gvboces.org';


is that correct?

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In reply to Jack B

Re: Moodle site very slow from off premisis

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
Yes, that is what is should be. Get familiar with the other configuration parameters too, in case.

If your Moodle is properly configured, then must be something else. For example the network (too many engineers around? ;) Focus on what Usmar is digging.
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In reply to Jack B

Re: Moodle site very slow from off premisis

by Usman Asar -
Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
From a Canadian location, it loaded quick, rest from Europeans and Asians, still loading as I type.
Apache doesn't work well on windows though, have you turned on OpCache?
also, can you turn on performance metrics for Windows server to see if it's bottling the CPU.

Further testing shows DNS resolution issue, which DNS provider are you with? as for local it will work fast , but for global DNS servers, I think it's hopping quite a bit to find the actual source.

Third Edit: It shows delegation not found at the parent, making your zone unreachable from the internet.
IP lookup information is succeeding, but not nameserver information.  
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In reply to Usman Asar

Re: Moodle site very slow from off premisis

by Jack B -

we handle DNS internally as well.  can you give me the results of your query?  this may be part of the problem.

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In reply to Jack B

Re: Moodle site very slow from off premisis

by Usman Asar -
Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Sure, you can find them HERE.

All other sites I have checked, resolves absolutely fine with IP, but not with domain name.

for a thorough result, follow THIS link

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In reply to Usman Asar

Re: Moodle site very slow from off premisis

by Jack B -

One thing I did find, we have several moodle sites out there, they all lookup to the same IP address:


Example:


moodle1.test.com

moodle2.test.com

moodle3.test.com

moodle4.test.com


all resolve to 10.10.1.2.  Can that be causing a problem when a reverse lookup occurs?  Do reverse lookups come into play with moodle?

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In reply to Jack B

Re: Moodle site very slow from off premisis

by Usman Asar -
Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
Not that I have ever experienced or heard of reverse lookups effecting moodle, it's just a web application like any other. why dont you try using external DNS service that have wider DNS propagation globally? Though pre-fetch is fine (1 second from asian servers as well), where you mentioned having adequate bandwidth, sometimes its network that causes delays as I have experienced South African servers to transfer data very slow despite having good amount of bandwidth.
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In reply to Usman Asar

Re: Moodle site very slow from off premisis

by Jack B -

Unfortunately we have to keep DNS in house.  Does moodle use host headers at all?

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