BigBlueButton experiences?

BigBlueButton experiences?

by Stefan Schoch -
Number of replies: 29
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

Hi there,

my 'Online Academy' is going live soon.

Before people get used to Zoom (currently implemented) too much, I'd like to find out whether BBB is a stable alternative and what kind of system I'd have to set up. I'm considering to cancel my paid Zoom and invest the money in a dedicated Vserver for Moodle & BBB.

What are your experiences using BBB in a Moodle environment? Is it reliable and stable enough? How about sound and video quality? Same as Zoom or lacking behind?

How many users can I safely teach in a BBB classroom?

Thx!
Stefan

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In reply to Stefan Schoch

Re: BigBlueButton experiences?

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
It's extremely tricky to host - well in my experience anyway. As long as you get the BBB service from BBB themselves you should be fine. The Moodle plugins are pretty good.
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In reply to Howard Miller

Re: BigBlueButton experiences?

by Stefan Schoch -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers
What exactly means 'extremely tricky' to host?
I'm about to set up a dedicated VServer just for BBB. Then I could exactly follow the recommendations of BBB.

What I'd prefer would be to run BBB, Joomla and Moodle on the same VServer. Would that be possible?
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In reply to Stefan Schoch

Re: BigBlueButton experiences?

by Ken Task -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

If you look at BBB recommendations ... dedicated server running Ubuntu.

http://docs.bigbluebutton.org/11install.html#minimum-server-requirements

Can verify that attempting to run one on CentOS 5 (at the time) was an experiment which failed.

As far as Joomla and Moodle on same server ... possible.  Recommend running Virtual Apaches ... one for your joomla CMS (www.tld) and one for your Moodle (elearning.tld).   Remember that your Joomla and Moodle will share server space/environment.

Joomla can be updated inside Joomla Admin.  Moodle doesn't have a way to update/upgrade built in ... thus best way to install and maintain is via Git.

https://docs.moodle.org/38/en/Git_for_Administrators

Strongly advise keeping the Joomla up to date.

'SoS', Ken


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In reply to Stefan Schoch

Re: BigBlueButton experiences?

by Howard Miller -
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See Marcus's reply below. Unless you *really* know what you're doing - don't self host. That way lies madness. We have a LOT of experienced resource and never got it to work satisfactorily.
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In reply to Howard Miller

Re: BigBlueButton experiences?

by Stuart Mealor -
We have recently enabled BBB for Moodle clients, using the plugin, and a dedicated server.
It was "fairly" straightforward to setup, but we did have a few issues at the end, mainly related to IP's and suchlike, which an 'average teacher' trying to self-host would NEVER solve.
The integration with the Moodle plugin is more flexible than the Zoom plugin for Moodle - more options and control.
Side-by-side, there is little to choose between the two.
You really need a Zoom Pro account though (free is limited to 40 minutes for a group) - 100 users and recordings.
We haven't enabled the .mp4 export function on BBB yet, as it's extra processing overhead (although we may enable this if people really want to watch replays on phones).
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In reply to Stefan Schoch

Re: BigBlueButton experiences?

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
This topic popped up recently more than once. For example, Looking for advice to setup a MOOC-like platform using Moodle.
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: BigBlueButton experiences?

by Marcus Green -
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Actually hosting any video server is inherently fairly complex, it is not anything to do with BBB itself. If Zoom offered self hosting it would be the same.
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In reply to Stefan Schoch

Re: BigBlueButton experiences?

by Melanie Scott -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

I can't say anything about virtual servers or anything techie. But I can say that back when the iMoot was still happening, it was entirely run on BBB for 72 hours straight...with 4-six sessions going every hour. And it was terrific. That was years ago.

At the time, I'd never seen Zoom. Zoom is great. 

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In reply to Melanie Scott

Re: BigBlueButton experiences?

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
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Same with the last Moodle MOOC at https://learn.moodle.org/ this year.
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: BigBlueButton experiences?

by Stefan Schoch -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers
So you're saying it's worth giving it a chance?
Then I'd try and find someone to set up that system for me.

In comparison with Zoom: which one is ahead in terms of quality and ease of use (participants side)?
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In reply to Stefan Schoch

Re: BigBlueButton experiences?

by Howard Miller -
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That "someone" is called Fred Dixon wink
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In reply to Howard Miller

Re: BigBlueButton experiences?

by James Asante -
Hi Howard
Can I get the contact details of Fred Dixon? My company is considering self installation for BBB.

Regards
James
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In reply to Stefan Schoch

Re: BigBlueButton experiences?

by Melanie Scott -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers
From what I remember, BBB was super easy to use, for both facilitators and participants....keep in mind that was three(ish) years ago or more. Now that Visvanath mentioned it, the MOOC last year was super easy too (I don't remember if I did any of the BBB sessions or if I watched the recordings) and they used BBB, I think.

Zoom is also super easy...my only complaint is that sometimes the errors aren't very clear about what is wrong when a participant tries to join but have the wrong link (but that's on us for not checking the links).

They're both good. Either way, you'll spend some $$. I think there is a Zoom plugin for Moodle, I just haven't used it. It might improve things in my complaint department (and track participation!). Zoom isn't super pricey, I don't know how expensive it is to work with Fred but he really seems to know his stuff.
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In reply to Melanie Scott

Re: BigBlueButton experiences?

by Howard Miller -
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I don't think anybody is doubting that BBB is good to use. I've already found it to be so anyway. The question was how easy is it to set up and run the server side of it. I believe that this is far from straightforward. As has been pointed out, this isn't just a BBB thing; it's this type of service in general.
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In reply to Howard Miller

Re: BigBlueButton experiences?

by Stefan Schoch -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers
Thanks to all for your answers!

Currently I'm trying to get the thing running in a fresh virtual server - seems to be tricky indeed.
I have support by an experienced service-provider, we'll see if we get that system running.

So please don't stop crossing fingers! 🤞
I love how BBB is integrated in Moodle and I'd really prefer using it instead of Zoom.

Stefan
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In reply to Stefan Schoch

Re: BigBlueButton experiences? Installation experiences

by Hermann Klocker-Mark -

Hello Stefan,

currently I am testing how well BBB is working for me (teaching from home, 10-20 students connecting at a time). Don't know how 20 simultaneous video feeds will be a burden to my server, I will see.

I want to share my experience installing BBB/Greenlight. I do not think that this is too hard as documentation for this is really thorough -- if you can follow the recommendations.

I did follow by renting a VPS (I know they recommend a dedicated bare metal server but trying a VPS is very cheap -- you can transfer later easily) just for this purpose alone, installing (automatically) Ubuntu 16.04 LTS there (and nothing else!) and following the installation docs just by reading, copying and pasting step by step. See https://docs.bigbluebutton.org/2.2/install.html

As there is a fully automatic script doing the main work basically this means firing a hand full of commands and perhaps customizing later. But that's it. Working since then flawlessly.



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In reply to Hermann Klocker-Mark

Re: BigBlueButton experiences? Installation experiences

by Stefan Schoch -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers
Hey Herrmann,

I tried the same myself - failed.
Then a BBB service provider contacted me and tried to get the thin running o a VPS (plain Ubuntu 16.04 at Strato) - failed and gave up eventually.

Where are you hosting and what ressources does your server have?

I will continue to use Zoom until I have enough convidence to give BBB another try.


Stefan
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In reply to Stefan Schoch

Odp: Re: BigBlueButton experiences? Installation experiences

by Piotr Esse -

Hi Stefan,

We have experience with BBB server setup. We can help You if You want. 

We lease preconfigured servers. You order and we send You back server URL and secret. 

Server is configured for Your domain - You provide subdomain.yourdomain.tlc and we do the rest.

For monthly fee we care about backups, manage server etc. 

Our servers are located in Poland/Warsaw in our Datacenter.

My email is : piotr.esse@sperollc.com

Kind regards,

 PiotrEsse

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In reply to Stefan Schoch

Re: BigBlueButton experiences? Installation experiences

by Hermann Klocker-Mark -

I will send details later as for now my next BBB conference is due in about half an hour...

Maybe you would like try my server - if yes I would like to communicate this privately.

Hermann

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In reply to Stefan Schoch

Re: BigBlueButton experiences? Installation experiences

by Rene Hamburger -
Hi Stefan,

I finally succeeded installing and running BigBlueButton on a Strato V40 server. I documented it here.

I started off with a V30 server, as the published specs seemed completely sufficient. What I did not know at that time was that the number of processes (actually: threads) is limited to 700 on that server and that BBB requires more than that on start-up.

What I will need to see in the future is whether the 1100 numproc limit of the V40 server is sufficient or whether BBB will spin up even more threads when the load is higher. I posted a question about this here in the BBB-setup group.

All the best,
Rene
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In reply to Rene Hamburger

Re: BigBlueButton experiences? Installation experiences

by Rene Hamburger -

This may be useful to others running BBB on a virtual server: a script to send metrics of the main limits to CloudRadar for monitoring and alerting.

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In reply to Rene Hamburger

Re: BigBlueButton experiences? Installation experiences

by Alex Romani -

Hi Rene,

Due to the lockdown, I am in need to implement the virtual classroom for my daughter's primary school so I'm trying BBB for this purpose.

I succesfully installed BBB on the V40 Strato server following your document, thank you for writing about your experience. 

I tried to make a conf call with 8 students. 6 of them was  streaming video (set to medium quality), and everything went fine(good streaming, nice audio etc.).  Anyway when the 7th student shared his video.... well that hit the numproc limit of 1100 shuting down the media server smile

So, now I'm trying to cut some threads (starting from the config files at this link https://docs.bigbluebutton.org/admin/configuration-files.html#Configuration_Files_) also I wrote to Strato requesting to change the numproc limit (it should be something easy to do for them).

Do you have any updates on your tests using BBB on a VPS?

Thank you.

Ciao,

Alex

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In reply to Stefan Schoch

Re: BigBlueButton experiences?

by Gary Newport -

Hi

I read some of these comments after I had the server built and had begun to commit to the install; I am pleased I read them afterwards.

Installing BBB 2.2 is simple.

I followed the instructions to the letter, adding only one further command at the end, once I had FreeSwitch added on...

sudo bbb-conf –-setip yourdomain.com

This did it. I am now in the testing stage, but everything has worked so far.

Be careful, however. Google offers instructions to 1.1 above 2.2, which almost led me down the wrong path at one point.

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In reply to Gary Newport

Re: BigBlueButton experiences?

by Kurbon Rakhmanov -
Hello everyone!
We can put background for lectors in BBB during the webinar.
If we can, how?
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In reply to Stefan Schoch

Re: BigBlueButton experiences?

by Daniel Glaser -

Hi Stefan,

i recently set up a Moodle and a BB server (plus Greenlight for non-Moodle meetings, e.g. one registered association I'm one of the principals).

Fortunately, I have a habbit to document complex things (IT, Programming, Electronics,...) on my blog. there you can find a quite condensed article about setting up BBB with Greenlight on a dedicated server (the connection to Moodle is trivial and does not need documentation). I also put in a few experiences I recently had and also some thoughts about putting moodle on the same machine.

Hope that helps.

Regards,
Daniel

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