Hardware and performance

Hi Ellen

Thanks for the details.

So, just 16 students logging in overloaded the server? (I am assuming that your site is on Moodle internal authentication, no sophisticated methods (see https://docs.moodle.org/en/Authentication). Then the server is either very weak or something broken. Whichever, you need leave it ASAP.

Note that the infamous Database error could come if the database is not responsive because it is overloaded.

You mean, the Server environment check warns about mysql_full_unicode_support? It is just a warning; has nothing to do with server overloading.