Quick follow up to this now we have upgraded. Whilst I haven't yet deployed goemaxima to production (I will after the re-sit exams in September), we have done some performance testing. The design of this testing isn't perfect as I only had limited time from the performance test team. It looks at performance of a CentOS linux server with MaximaPool vs a new Ubuntu linux server with goemaxima. Both had identical CPU and memory (4 CPU cores plus 16GB RAM). The test ran 100 simulated students taken a test where all started within 30 seconds of each other and the exam ran for 2 hours. I think we were comparing STACK v4.3.11. but are now on v4.4.4.
My interpretation of these results are that for general moodle access (not involving maxima), we see slightly worse response time due to the better performance you get from CentOS. But when the test is running we are seeing much better response times and in this test about 30% faster at start up after the exam password is entered.
| Transaction | t02 server Baseline Avg |
t03 server New Avg |
change | t02 server Baseline 90th |
t03 server New 90th |
change |
| MDL01_04_00_EnterQuizPassword | 4823 | 4421 | -402 | 9200 | 6354 | -2846 |
| MDL01_14_00_ConfirmSubmit | 2324 | 2352 | 28 | 2440 | 2466 | 26 |
| MDL01_02_00_Login | 515 | 668 | 153 | 562 | 898 | 336 |
| MDL01_01_00_MoodleHomePage | 307 | 455 | 148 | 339 | 1043 | 704 |
| MDL01_04_00_ClickQuiz | 148 | 229 | 81 | 170 | 341 | 171 |
| MDL01_03_00_ClickCourse | 157 | 251 | 94 | 179 | 392 | 213 |
| MDL01_15_00_FinishReview | 114 | 192 | 78 | 135 | 224 | 89 |
| MDL01_16_00_Logout | 164 | 226 | 62 | 182 | 262 | 80 |
My interpretation of these results are that for general moodle access (not involving maxima), we see slightly worse response time due to the better performance you get from CentOS. But when the test is running we are seeing much better response times and in this test about 30% faster at start up after the exam password is entered.
Other standard testing of the built in STACK tests showed me goemaxia completing tests typically about 10%-30% quicker than with MaximaPool.
Moving to goemaxima feels like a no brainer at the moment.
Best wishes,
Stuart