Recommended specs - new moodle installation

Recommended specs - new moodle installation

by Basti Bunz -
Number of replies: 2

Dear all,

because our University Computing Center is not willing to host our Moodle platform anymore, we have to rent a server from them and install and maintain it on our own. The software side should be no problem but I'm quite unsure about the hardware requirements. Currently we're running a Moodle 3.1 installation but we would like to update to 3.5 in the next 6 months or so. We have ~1300 registered users and ~900 current students at our institute but highest number of concurrently logged in users was something around 50 people. Most of the time there are like 10 people using it at the same time. The basic hosting package from our University Computing Center includes 1 virtual CPU, 1GB of RAM and 8GB storage. I know that I'll need more storage but apart from that I am very unsure what is needed. I could rent up to 4 virtual CPUs and up to 16GB of RAM (but that would get a bit pricey and our institute is not the best-funded at our University...anyway), so maybe one of you people has a similar user base or other recommendations and experiences.

I'm looking forward to hearing from you! Thanks in advance!


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In reply to Basti Bunz

Re: Recommended specs - new moodle installation

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

As you can read in the https://docs.moodle.org/en/Performance documentation, there is no reliable way of predicting hardware. But the numbers you've provided sound familiar to me.
wink

If I understood you right, you are looking at virtual servers, which I find sensible. For those numbers you don't necessarily need a dedicated (hardware) server, unless you are from the Microsoft world. (I do not mean the underlying virtualization framework. Microsoft does a good job there.) As a University institution I assume you are not afraid of Unix/Linux. Independently of your high-efficient Linux server experience, you have to forget 1 GB. (There was a recent discussion of such a case.) It is also absurd a University bargaining on small numbers of vCPs or GBs. (What is your hourly salary? What is the damage if your students are held from working, per hour. etc.) My starting resources would be a "Quad" - 4 vCPU, 4 GB RAM.

Nobody can advice you on disk space. Subtract 1 GB for the LAMP, 0.5 GB for Moodle source + Git repo, 1 GB for the database and you'll know how much you have for everything else: user data, uploaded files, temporary files, course backups, on-site site backups, ....
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In reply to Basti Bunz

Re: Recommended specs - new moodle installation

by Ralf Hilgenstock -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
Hi Basti

The actual numbers shows that it works because there are no real concurrent request at database/ server level. 4GB Ram and 2 cores should be a size where you dont get any problems

The required ressources are related to your scenarios. I. E. Exam quizzes with 50+ students starting at the same time, huge scorms or ectensice use of chat will need more redsources than your data center gives you in the moment.

Ralf

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