The default session is stored to disk
The following forum post suggest not using databases for busy site https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=264600 My site has 5000 users and 300-500 logged on at any given time, would that be considered a busy site that should use file based session instead of our current database (mysql)?
I believe memcached is the preferred method for handling the sessions but I havent pursued it and wasnt certain how good windows 2008/2012 support was on this.
I was revisiting this as our test environment doesnt appear as fast as expected after a php 5.6->7.1 and moodle 3.1->3.3 upgrade, jmeter test show logging in and out among the slower processes. I like the fact sessions are preserved during web server IIS resets as our database is on another server, cant think of any other benefits though?
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environment windows 2008/iis7.5/moodle3.3/mysql/php7.1