With all the issues that seem to crop up with virtual servers, what would be the preferred OS to run Moodle under (preferrably a Linux based OS)?
Can anyone tell me if Moodle plays nice using Ubuntu, or SuSe?
Thanks.
hi Ralph,
Mate you'll find that there have been a great many previous discussions in this forum on precisely this topic. Do a search and you won't be disappointed.
Having said that, most contributors to this forum host on Linux of one flavour or other - predominantly Debian-based distros (incl. Ubuntu), CentOS, etc.... although there are many hosting on Windows - particularly in K-12 settings where it seems that suits the blend of admin skills and the generally lower performance & scalability requirements.
One overriding comment I'd make is that the choice of a particular Linux distro is much less significant an issue than specific configuration settings, performance tuning and tweaking that you can do (e.g. Apache & MySQL settings, use of a PHP accelerator, etc).
All the best with getting your setup sorted!
MC
Mate you'll find that there have been a great many previous discussions in this forum on precisely this topic. Do a search and you won't be disappointed.
Having said that, most contributors to this forum host on Linux of one flavour or other - predominantly Debian-based distros (incl. Ubuntu), CentOS, etc.... although there are many hosting on Windows - particularly in K-12 settings where it seems that suits the blend of admin skills and the generally lower performance & scalability requirements.
One overriding comment I'd make is that the choice of a particular Linux distro is much less significant an issue than specific configuration settings, performance tuning and tweaking that you can do (e.g. Apache & MySQL settings, use of a PHP accelerator, etc).
All the best with getting your setup sorted!
MC
> there have been a great many previous discussions in this forum on precisely this topic ...
like this for example http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=52498
like this for example http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=52498
We've been been running Moodle 1.6 on an Ubuntu 6.06 installation for a few months now and I've come across no issues with the platform at all. If you install Ubuntu's Web Server setup you get a very well configured LAMP server out of the box, leaving you with plenty of time to tweak it for your specific needs / performance requirements.
Ubuntu also plays very well on a large range of hardware - I use it on some old PowerMacs for testing and some dev, and then transfer stuff over to AMD 64 and Intel Xeon based web servers and havn't hit a snag yet.
I'd definatley recommend Linux as a platform for moodle, however once your past that decision the specifics of your hardware and how you choose to configure the setup are far more important than the specific distro. If you have Linux experience use whatever your confortable with. If you don't, pick a distro with an excellent community behind it and spend some time getting to grips with using Linux - a good community will mean you can find the answer to almost any question online without too much searching
Ubuntu also plays very well on a large range of hardware - I use it on some old PowerMacs for testing and some dev, and then transfer stuff over to AMD 64 and Intel Xeon based web servers and havn't hit a snag yet.
I'd definatley recommend Linux as a platform for moodle, however once your past that decision the specifics of your hardware and how you choose to configure the setup are far more important than the specific distro. If you have Linux experience use whatever your confortable with. If you don't, pick a distro with an excellent community behind it and spend some time getting to grips with using Linux - a good community will mean you can find the answer to almost any question online without too much searching
Rick,
I'm curious, are using 64 bit Ubuntu or the 32 bit distro? I've got two 32 bit machines I'm contemplating using ... but I've also thought about building a new box (although I'd intended for it to be a personal machine and to remain at home ... but it might give work the idea that they're wasting money still purchasing 32 bit intel boxes when their employees start bringing in equipment superior to what they are purchasing).
Thanks, Ralph.
I'm curious, are using 64 bit Ubuntu or the 32 bit distro? I've got two 32 bit machines I'm contemplating using ... but I've also thought about building a new box (although I'd intended for it to be a personal machine and to remain at home ... but it might give work the idea that they're wasting money still purchasing 32 bit intel boxes when their employees start bringing in equipment superior to what they are purchasing).
Thanks, Ralph.
Our live moodle server is a 4x3GHz Intel Xeon 32-bit, running the appropriate Ubuntu Build. Performance is excellent in general - we've certainly not suffered because we're using a 32bit box. The only issue with the server has been RAM. During the initial pilot Moodle was using upto 2 GB of ram just to serve 2 or 3 classes. Apache & MySQL are setup to limit themselves before they run out of ram, and there hasn't been any significant issues caused by this thus far, however I am hoping to get 8 GB of RAM in there soon - alot of teachers are wanting to teach entire lessons based around Resources and Quizzes in Moodle, so I want to get as much capacity as possible before it takes off too much!
I've been using a 2 way AMD Opteron 64bit box as a development machine (the motherboard has poor I/O so it wouldn't be suitable for a live server) and the fact that its 64bit doesn't seem to have made much difference performance wise. As far as I can tell I/O and Ram are the big bottlenecks with moodle - after we'd tailored our Apache install to match the RAM available, processor usage hasn't left the confort zone once!
If I was going to buy a new server, ideally it would be an AMD64 based box with minimum 8GB of RAM and as much HDD space as I could afford - some of our newer staff are very keen to put as many videos, audio files etc up onto Moodle as they can, so the size of the MoodleData directory is growing very rapidly. When you add in a weeks worth of backup data sat there, the disk space used gets very large!
That said, if I had to compromise on that I'd go for a 32bit box with lots of RAM and fast Disks rather than a lower spec'd 64bit machine any day!
As for OSes - Ubutnu has peformed admirably for me on both Intel / AMD 32bit platforms and AMD 64 have performed flawlessley.
I've been using a 2 way AMD Opteron 64bit box as a development machine (the motherboard has poor I/O so it wouldn't be suitable for a live server) and the fact that its 64bit doesn't seem to have made much difference performance wise. As far as I can tell I/O and Ram are the big bottlenecks with moodle - after we'd tailored our Apache install to match the RAM available, processor usage hasn't left the confort zone once!
If I was going to buy a new server, ideally it would be an AMD64 based box with minimum 8GB of RAM and as much HDD space as I could afford - some of our newer staff are very keen to put as many videos, audio files etc up onto Moodle as they can, so the size of the MoodleData directory is growing very rapidly. When you add in a weeks worth of backup data sat there, the disk space used gets very large!
That said, if I had to compromise on that I'd go for a 32bit box with lots of RAM and fast Disks rather than a lower spec'd 64bit machine any day!
As for OSes - Ubutnu has peformed admirably for me on both Intel / AMD 32bit platforms and AMD 64 have performed flawlessley.