Moodle in English: Advice on server to run multiple Moodle sites

Hello all, we have a 2-year-old installation of Moodle 2.9 and rather than upgrading this 40GB site (yes, 40 GB) we have decided to set up 2 x Moodle 3.5 sites in the same managed VPS environment.

Our MVPS provider in Australia wants to know how much RAM, CPU etc we need to run the following:

Outgoing Moodle 2.9 site (typically 100-140 actice users/month) - this will be phased out by end of 2018.
Moodle 3.5 site - production (will start small, then number of enrollments should build to 100-140 users/month)
Moodle 3.5 site - testing (for upgrades, plugins, etc - so we don't ruin the production site with upgrades!)

We currently have 75 GB on the VPS (20 GB available). Any suggestions please? What do I need to support these 3 sites?

Thanks in advance,

Jason

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Re: Advice on server to run multiple Moodle sites

by Visvanath Ratnaweera - Wednesday, 11 July 2018, 2:14 PM

About RAM and CPU:
The load does not seem to be high. This is a VPS? Why don't you start with a modest one, say 4 GB / 2 vCPU, and add more resources, when needed?

About disk space:
The Moodle program code takes only about 0.5 GB. The other two needs, the database and the uploaded files, they continually grow as your users upload files. Use the current size as a starting point.

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Re: Advice on server to run multiple Moodle sites

by Jason Lane - Thursday, 12 July 2018, 10:19 AM

Thank you, we currently have:

75 GB Storage (78% used) / 150 GB Monthly Data Transfer / 2 GB Guaranteed RAM / 2 GB Burstable RAM

And server information via WHM is (2 processors):

Processor #1
- Vendor GenuineIntel
- Name Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5620 @ 2.40GHz
- Speed 798.000 MHz
- Cache 12288 KB
Processor #2
- Vendor GenuineIntel
- Name Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5620 @ 2.40GHz
- Speed 1197.500 MHz
- Cache 12288 KB

Would you recommend that we look towards a dedicated server or stay with this?

Many thanks for your advice,

Jason

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Re: Advice on server to run multiple Moodle sites

by Visvanath Ratnaweera - Thursday, 12 July 2018, 12:16 PM

Hi

- Storage: No point in trying to spare here, storage is cheap. You already use about 50 GB. You need space to grow, make backups, ... I would start at 200 GB. Again, if this is really a VPS, you can always expand.

- RAM: RAM. 2 GB is considered low for recent Moodle versions. So 2 GB Guaranteed RAM / 2 GB Burstable might work but 4 GB as I suggested is safer.

- Processor: Is confusing. They look like real CPUs, not vCPUs. Could you explain?

After reading your initial post again, I don't think a dedicated server is necessary. VPS have the advantage that you can grow with your site - You don't have to predict the future of your site now. And of course VPS save energy. (Who thinks of the climate these days?

)

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Re: Advice on server to run multiple Moodle sites

by Jason Lane - Friday, 13 July 2018, 3:05 PM

Thanks Visvanath, good insights. We have "4xCPU" - what is that? Good or bad?

More info about our current plan is here (Managed VPS3 - https://www.digitalpacific.com.au/hosting/dedicated-hosting/virtual-private-servers/managed/).

We are generally happy with the MVPS - but I take your point about the need for more RAM.

Our server loads (running the single Moodle 2.9 site at the moment) are: CENTOS 6.10 virtuozzo [vps] v72.0.9 Load Averages: 0.55 0.37 0.37

So in your view, could we add the extra 2 Moodle sites without needing to upgrade?

Many thanks,

Jason

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Re: Advice on server to run multiple Moodle sites

by Visvanath Ratnaweera - Friday, 13 July 2018, 6:42 PM

Hi Jason

One thing you must understand, there is no way of telling what server is required for a Moodle server. See https://docs.moodle.org/en/Performance_FAQ#What_are_the_requirements_for_N_users.3F. What I am doing is highly unscientific and may be off by factors. My excuse for doing so is that I monitor the performance and the load on a couple of Linux servers incl. VPS. When the things go wrong, I depend on the underlying virtualization to correct them. Now looking at your server provider I see that they have only four plans and you are already at the top. So the flexibility is missing. I don't know, since these servers are managed by them, they might upgrade yours outside the plans - if the need comes.

The specs say 4 vCPU. This is common measure in virtual environments, 1 vCPU is ideally equivalent to a 1 GHz Pentium.

Yes, forgot to mention the operating system. Linux is the best choice.

Out of the two additional sites, I read that one will successively replace the current site. That way, you are talking of only one additional site, the test Moodle. In itself not a burden, but provided the low end RAM size and what kinds of tests, backups, etc. you run, you might run in to trouble.

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Re: Advice on server to run multiple Moodle sites

by Jason Lane - Sunday, 15 July 2018, 6:46 PM

Thanks again for your helpful insights and advice - much appreciated!

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Re: Advice on server to run multiple Moodle sites

by Visvanath Ratnaweera - Sunday, 15 July 2018, 7:17 PM

Always good to know!

In case, you saw the "Rate" button, below, right?

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Re: Advice on server to run multiple Moodle sites

by Paul Raper - Monday, 16 July 2018, 2:36 PM

Just to add my thoughts. I started a very similar project only with three Moodle instances:

Moodle 3.51 - live
Moodle 3.51 - test
Moodle 3.6 - Development

I threw in a Mahara instance and an Owncloud instance.

See below for our resource specification. The OS is Linux Debian. Also for what it's worth, we have a separte Linux Ubuntu server running Learning Locker for analytics.