Infrastructure for Moodle

Infrastructure for Moodle

by Charlene de Costa Chaves ccchaves -
Number of replies: 8

Hi.

First, thanks for listening!

I need to define an infrastructure for the Moodle environment with 1000 simultaneous users.

This environment will use Linux + Apache + MariaDB.
In addition to these requirements, this environment must be accessible on the local network for internal users and on the Internet for external users.

We also have Big-IP and Palo Alto for network security. What is the suggested infra?

Could you help me?

Thank yoy
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In reply to Charlene de Costa Chaves ccchaves

Re: Infrastructure for Moodle

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Moving to Hardware and performance forum...

Start with Performance and Performance FAQ ... then have a search through this forum for (literally) hundreds of very similar questions. 

I would also ask you to think about "1000 simultaneous users". That's a lot. What do you mean by a simultaneous user? What are they all doing?

The internal and external thing - start by reading Masquerading.

What's your Moodle experience? How large is the site you are currently running?
Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Infrastructure for Moodle

by Charlene de Costa Chaves ccchaves -
Hello,

Thank you very much for your attention!

I have already read the Performance topics and that is why there were so many doubts about scaling, I have no experience in Moodle Infrastructure.

Currently, our site is local, with only internal users access and 100Gb in courses. It´s runs only one virtual machine.

The new project involves making the site available to internet, to serve more users who can reach up to 1000 by taking courses at the same time.

Thank you
In reply to Charlene de Costa Chaves ccchaves

Re: Infrastructure for Moodle

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Assuming your users are doing much the same thing how many users do you have who are "taking courses at the same time" now?

I still don't really know what *you* mean by "simultaneous users" - this is pretty important.
In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Infrastructure for Moodle

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

To add to the confusion on "simultaneous users" visit https://docs.moodle.org/en/Performance_FAQ#Why_is_.22concurrent_users.22_not_a_useful_metric.3F

What we need is the good old nomgramme. smile

In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Infrastructure for Moodle

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Yes, well. We get a lot of questions like this and, to date, "what do you mean by nnnn concurrent users?" has yet to produce a useful response. I suppose I must be asking the wrong question but people get these numbers from *somewhere*. What I suppose I'm really asking is "what steps did you take to scope the size of this proposed installation?". Or is it just finger in the air.

Reality seems to be a combination of iterative hardware expansion and throwing as much tin as you can afford at the problem big grin
In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Infrastructure for Moodle

by Charlene de Costa Chaves ccchaves -
Hello guys, thank you so much for your help and information.

On the question of "concurrent users" and improving for "simultaneous requests", we are currently unable to answer this figure.

The Moodle environment that works today is 1.6.1 version, does not allow external requests, is only on the intranet and the current hardware configuration (16GB RAM, 8 CPUs) should not exceed 100 simultaneous requests, as the virtual machine shares others types of services.

Well, the educational area of ​​the company requested an update Moodle version and consequently allow external access to a larger number of users. The value of up to 1000 simultaneous users came from the requesting area, but we already understand that these are simultaneous accesses. The new infrastructure is being planned to use Moodle 3.7.3, Oracle Linux 7.7 as OS, Apache 2.4.6, PHP 7.2.27, MariaDB 10.2.13. The Database server is another virtual machine.

Therefore, considering until now the current requirements and all the security issues, the question arises of which infrastructure is recommended.
In reply to Charlene de Costa Chaves ccchaves

Re: Infrastructure for Moodle

by Alain Raap -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers
Charlene, you say " I have no experience in Moodle Infrastructure." Do you have experience in Linux (+ Apache / MariaDB)? We have the same stack like your site but less concurrent users, for us it wasn't easy to get the stack working and tune it for a good performance. We have a large network and had a lot of security issues to tackle. I would ask assistance from your collegues from infrastructure to answer and define your questions. Is that possible?
Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Alain Raap

Re: Infrastructure for Moodle

by Charlene de Costa Chaves ccchaves -
Hello how are you?

Yes, it's possible.
How did you set the stack? Did you use two servers or just one? What security problems are found? How many concurrent users do you have? I have experience in Linux and Apache, but not in MariaDB, however, we have a team of Database and PHP Developers who are in the same project.

Thank you very much for answering