Which hosting do you recommend?

Which hosting do you recommend?

by Russell Schwartz -
Number of replies: 11
On studying the Moodle and DreamHost pages, I see that DreamHost does not provide the right versions of PHP and MySQL I need to run 4.0, 4.1, or 4.2 properly. As a result, I see the following options:

  1. Set up "local" versions of PHP and MySQL on the server;
  2. Find a new service provider, who can give me the PHP and MySQL versions I need; or
  3. Use Moodle Cloud.

Options #1 and #2 would be a major headache for me. I'm an instructional designer and teacher, not a system administrator.

Last winter, when resolving 4.2 problems I mentioned earlier, Visvanath Ratnaweera suggested I consider Moodle Cloud. I said that I would. So, before I put any further effort into 4.1, I'm going to take a time-out and go study the Moodle Cloud offerings.

Cloud-based services is where our school has been headed because we don't have staff to do all the technical stuff. Next semester, we will go to a cloud-based library catalog. And right now we are starting to look at cloud-based Student Information Systems seriously. We really can't afford the license fees, but we definitely can't afford the support staff to do things in-house.

Thanks for advice this week!

-- Russ



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In reply to Russell Schwartz

Re: Which hosting do You Recommend?

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Immàgine de Particularly helpful Moodlers Immàgine de Translators
Hi Russel

MoodleCloud would be the first place to check, not only because its profits fund the development of Moodle, also it is priceworthy for western standards - if the specs suit your needs. Looking at your summary, the advocacy, I mean, yours may not be the typical application but still very common.

As always, DIY is cheaper and fun, if you have the skill and the capacity. You'll find the alternatives in Finding and Selecting A Web Host - Moodle is Free and Open Source Software after all!

P.S. We are no more at "Which 4.1" rather at "Where to host"? And for some obscure reason the Hardware and performance forum is the correct place for that question. Hint to the Moderator ;)

P.P.S. Before the discussion gets distracted from this marketing term, Cloud, which the techies in that forum won't take well, myself included, let's call it "hosting", in you case either shared hosting (turn-key) or VPS (DIY).
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Which hosting do You Recommend?

by Howard Miller -
Immàgine de Core developers Immàgine de Documentation writers Immàgine de Particularly helpful Moodlers Immàgine de Peer reviewers Immàgine de Plugin developers
"The Cloud" is of course just somebody else's hardware. Of course, it has gained a load of marketing stuff around lots of vague "devops" services that aren't in any way related to the location of the servers.

On top of that "devops" is another term used mostly to sell training.

Don't get me started about "Agile" (cf. "agile").
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Which hosting do You Recommend?

by Russell Schwartz -
Thanks, moderators, for splitting out this separate discussion. And thanks, Visvanath for your continued good advice. 

Also thanks for helping me use the right terms. I'm not worried that this will reduce the number of ways I can look foolish! 😂

If I have any further hosting questions or comments, I will post them in the Hardware and performance forum.

-- Russ
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In reply to Russell Schwartz

Re: Which hosting do You Recommend?

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Immàgine de Particularly helpful Moodlers Immàgine de Translators
A true story: The LMS team presents their revamped Moodle to the new institution head. He interrupts and wants to know whether the Moodle is in the Cloud. "Luckily" the sysadmins had hosted Moodle in a place called AWS or Azure or some such thing, so they could emphatically say Yes. Everybody was happy.

No, they are not foolish. Some beings live in the Cloud and are perfectly happy.

Here is a fantasy story: smile
===
`Once upon a time there were three little sisters,' the Dormouse began in a great hurry; `and their names were Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie; and they lived at the bottom of a well--'

`What did they live on?' said Alice, who always took a great interest in questions of eating and drinking.

`They lived on treacle,' said the Dormouse, after thinking a minute or two.

`They couldn't have done that, you know,' Alice gently remarked; `they'd have been ill.'

`So they were,' said the Dormouse; `very ill.'

Alice tried to fancy to herself what such an extraordinary ways of living would be like, but it puzzled her too much, so she went on: `But why did they live at the bottom of a well?'
=== https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rgs/alice-VII.html

P.S. Now this sub-thread has been split, no need for new threads in the other forum.
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In reply to Russell Schwartz

Re: Which hosting do you recommend?

by Rick Jerz -
Immàgine de Particularly helpful Moodlers Immàgine de Testers
Starting with MoodleCloud gets you started.

I am not familiar with Dreamhost. However, when I explore their website, it appears that a Dreamhost VPS might include the correct versions of PHP and MySQL for Moodle 4.2. The Dreamhost MySQL VPS seems to include MySQL 8.0. So if you like Dreamhost (for whatever reason) keep exploring.
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In reply to Russell Schwartz

Re: Which hosting do you recommend?

by Howard Miller -
Immàgine de Core developers Immàgine de Documentation writers Immàgine de Particularly helpful Moodlers Immàgine de Peer reviewers Immàgine de Plugin developers
We have managed to get deeply philosophical here. I'm probably going to make it worse... you might want to have a read of, https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=447628

If money were no object, the simple thing is probably to buy a Linux VM of some sort off AWS, DigitalOcean or whoever and you can more or less run any versions of the OS software you like. You can even use their database, cache, file server, backup (and so on) services if you want. However, to get enough computing power to run a decent size Moodle site is going to be relatively costly.

As mentioned in the other thread, you can probably reduce this by looking at containers (most well-known hosts have some variation on this) but you've just increased the complexity of the project by an order of magnitude.

At the end of the day, it's like buying gas or electricity - there's a little meter ticking away somewhere and someone will charge you for the stuff you use. Sometimes quite a lot.
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In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Deeply philosophical [OT]

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Immàgine de Particularly helpful Moodlers Immàgine de Translators
The worst "deeply philosophical" statement of the year:

At the end of the day, it's like buying gas or electricity - there's a little meter ticking away somewhere and someone will charge you for the stuff you use. Sometimes quite a lot.

LOL

Cheshire Cat fading to smile

`and I wish you wouldn't keep appearing and vanishing so suddenly: you make one quite giddy.'

`All right,' said the Cat; and this time it vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone.

`Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin,' thought Alice; `but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!'


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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Deeply philosophical [OT]

by Russell Schwartz -
Don't worry, Visvanath. I never go anywhere without a porpoise. 🐬

😉

-- Russ
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In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Which hosting do you recommend?

by James Steerpike -
Immàgine de Particularly helpful Moodlers
I don't think a cloud based solution is  costly. Quite the contrary.
No up front costs.  Flexibility in deciding how much power you need. Better connection speeds as users are connecting to a data centre rather than your server. Automatic backups. Ability to clone a server and test upgrades or new configurations. Sure the meter on the cloud server is turning but so is your power meter for your local server. A 200 watt power supply running nonstop for a year is not free.
I would suggest anyone without an IT team would be better off going for a cloud server. I think a $20 monthly budget would be enough for most Moodle installations.
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In reply to James Steerpike

Re: Which hosting do you recommend?

by Howard Miller -
Immàgine de Core developers Immàgine de Documentation writers Immàgine de Particularly helpful Moodlers Immàgine de Peer reviewers Immàgine de Plugin developers
"I think a $20 monthly budget would be enough for most Moodle installations."

Well... it depends. You might get Moodle running but I think the capacity of the site would be limited. 


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In reply to Russell Schwartz

Re: Which hosting do you recommend?

by Frank Show -
I also think it's a good idea to consider cloud-based services for your library catalog and student information system. Cloud-based services can save you money and time in the long run.
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