I've recently (this week, really,) set up Moodle on an experimental server in the Faculty Media Lab at my university. I'm curious about the scaleability of Moodle. Who are the largest users? I'd love to know how may classes, sections, students and enrollments they're able to run.
Cheers, Theo Stone
The biggest active site I know has 1400 courses and about 17000 students.
The biggest course I saw (on a different site) had about 200 quizzes plus 200 resources (not that pleasant to work with actually).
The new Groups support will help with large classes.
There are no limitations inherent in Moodle ... it all comes down to hardware grunt and that depends on many factors such as the features being used and how they are being used. More RAM and more CPU can solve any problem.
The biggest course I saw (on a different site) had about 200 quizzes plus 200 resources (not that pleasant to work with actually).
The new Groups support will help with large classes.
There are no limitations inherent in Moodle ... it all comes down to hardware grunt and that depends on many factors such as the features being used and how they are being used. More RAM and more CPU can solve any problem.
The biggest active site I know has 1400 courses and about 17000 students.
Can you tell us which site this is?
When looking at the CPU and RAM, is there a way to split Moodle up onto multiple servers. For example, a Server for just the Database, and a series of Servers for student Interface.
As I understand MySQL and when I first installed Moodle, I can point to a database on a different server. This would definintely allow for a little bit of distribution. The quesiton is can we have multiple Web side servers to which the student can connect to handle the load using something like a cluster? This would be awesome. Another Opensource project that does this from the begining is the CHEF project from University of Michigan. Theirs seems to require the servers at the begining of the process thus leaving us out who have small server needs or low funds. I have not seen any thing which would prevent Moodle from being scalable onto one huge Database Server and multiple "User" servers for serving the actual web content. The only thing I can think which might cause a problem is in the file storage location. I guess this could be done using an NFS mount or shared Drive, but that would definitely be an advanced installation.
It is definitely possible to build a Linux cluster from multiple computers and run Moodle on it. This installation is living proof! 
A "How to build a Moodle cluster server" walkthrough would be nice! Hint hint!
A "How to build a Moodle cluster server" walkthrough would be nice! Hint hint!
Moodle at sf.net can't send e-mail out 
Yes - they had a spam problem so switched it off for all Sourceforge projects.
It doesn't matter, that site isn't being used. It does work, though, which is why I was just showing it as an example.
It doesn't matter, that site isn't being used. It does work, though, which is why I was just showing it as an example.
It is really sad when folks abuse a free resource like SourceForge and that abuse affects the OpenSource community negatively.
WP1
Looking for a small easy to configure and implement load balancer?
Try pound.
The only "problem" with this software is that all connections are from the load balancer (the machine running pound).
But if you have multiple webserver configured the right way this might be the solution to balance the load.
To make it more fault tolerant, use it in combination with Fake and mon.
To go advance in clustering take a look at Linux Virtual server.
Hope this helps anyone out here
Regards,
Huib
Try pound.
The only "problem" with this software is that all connections are from the load balancer (the machine running pound).
But if you have multiple webserver configured the right way this might be the solution to balance the load.
To make it more fault tolerant, use it in combination with Fake and mon.
To go advance in clustering take a look at Linux Virtual server.
Hope this helps anyone out here
Regards,
Huib
We are currently evaluating Moodle as a potential VLE for the entire university (8000+ students, 50 departments, around 1000 courses).
Scalability is a major issue. Can I ask which organisation has the set-up you describe and how they configured Moodle to cope with this load?
Colin
Scalability is a major issue. Can I ask which organisation has the set-up you describe and how they configured Moodle to cope with this load?
Colin
I work for the East Midlands Broadband Consortium (embc) and we are looking for a new VLE. We have recently decided to exit our contract with our current suppliers due to a number of factors; not least of which was that we were locked into a proprietary system.
Given that we provide broadband and a learning platform to 50% of schools in the East Midlands with the aim of 100% by 2006, we potentially have a vast user base; especially when you add in the wider use in the Adult and community Learning sector (potentially 70,000 plus users).
We have our own fibre/copper network and a central server farm, on which Moodle would be installed. We intend to have a single sign-on facility that will allow our users to sign in once, and be able to access their school LAN, and any other tools that their account gives them permission to access.
Background out of the way, I have a couple of questions around this:
will Moodle work on such a scale?
Will we be able to integrate it with our single sign-on?
Can Moodle handle meta data?
Would we be able to migrate the content held on our current Learning Platform?
Many thanks for now; I imagine I'll have many more questions as we progress down this road!
Ted Edmondson
You might be foolhardy installing one single Moodle for all those users, though things might be improved by 2006.
However, the good thing about Moodle (and open source in general) is that there are no licensing restrictions and you can run as many as you want!
The answer to your other questions is all yes, though different amounts of work are required for different environments.
However, the good thing about Moodle (and open source in general) is that there are no licensing restrictions and you can run as many as you want!
The answer to your other questions is all yes, though different amounts of work are required for different environments.
Our current Learning Platform is installed on our server farm and runs from a user database based on sites. So each school has an account on the system, with individual user accounts running off that.
We want to migrate to a system that uses our single sign-on (which I think will use LDAP verification) and individual accounts.
As our current user base is nowhere near the upper end of our eventual estimates, does it seem feasible to migrate over now and then allow it grow organically? There will certainly be a vast amount of money saved that will allow some serious programming time to be bought to fix any problems we encounter, and customise the system to suit our requirements.
thanks for your help.
Ted
I think organic growth is the *only* sensible way to go. It is very, very hard to envisage what n users and y courses will look like in terms of load and system requirements. There are too many factors. The way to go is to make a start and get some real experience.
You should remember that as Moodle is open-source you can modify it to exactly meet your requirements, and I don't think that any of them will be particularly difficult. This is an option you probably don't have with your existing system. I imagine that you have the resources and budget to undertake this quite easily.
However, the devil is, as they say, in the detail. You ask about meta-data. This is something of a buzzword these days and it would depend on exactly what you mean. As regards extracting data from your existing system, it is unlikely to be a push-button process, but again it depends on the nature of your data and how much there is. It may be worth your while developing import processes.
Whatever anybody tells you - you would be in exactly the same position with another commercial product - in fact probably much worse. AND, you would be staring down the barrel of huge consultancy fees.
Good luck with Moodle!!
You should remember that as Moodle is open-source you can modify it to exactly meet your requirements, and I don't think that any of them will be particularly difficult. This is an option you probably don't have with your existing system. I imagine that you have the resources and budget to undertake this quite easily.
However, the devil is, as they say, in the detail. You ask about meta-data. This is something of a buzzword these days and it would depend on exactly what you mean. As regards extracting data from your existing system, it is unlikely to be a push-button process, but again it depends on the nature of your data and how much there is. It may be worth your while developing import processes.
Whatever anybody tells you - you would be in exactly the same position with another commercial product - in fact probably much worse. AND, you would be staring down the barrel of huge consultancy fees.
Good luck with Moodle!!
Ted,
A fast forward to 2008. We are looking at setting up Moodle based elearning centers. Would it be possible to share your learning from your experiences:
Vipen
A fast forward to 2008. We are looking at setting up Moodle based elearning centers. Would it be possible to share your learning from your experiences:
- Are you using Moodle now? And if so
- Your situation current:
- Configuration,
- Number of enrolled students
- Number of courses offered
- Number of Teachers
- Typical number of concurrent users
- Bandwidth required from the server farm
- Configuration,
- Are you planning to use server virtualization?
- Are the Schools using Thin Clients, connected with a Terminal Server which then is hooked , over the Internet to your server farm. Response time etc issues. Ideally we would like to have a bevy of Thin Clients,connected to a Class server (about 50-100 Thin Clients per server).The Class server could serve local content, to save Internet bandwidth.
- Would it help to use technologies like NX, VNC, RDP to reduce Internet traffic from your server farm to the School servers/Thin Clients?
- How do you train the System Admin/IT Incharges and Teachers of the schools?
Vipen