I have installed Moodle on a hosted/shared server account with a company that claims to support Moodle. However, I have had nothing but problems.
Problem 1: About every third time someone tries to move about the site they get a could not connect error.
Problem 2: When I bring about 30 students to the computer lab to all work at the same time, twice now the the school's IP address has been blocked because it thought it was "flooding" the server.
Is my server just not up to snuff? Or is Moodle that draining on a system? I am open to changing servers, but we don't want to pay more then $10 a month. We have about 700 students enrolled in 8 different courses.
The server company is Siteground.com - in case anyone has had personal experience with them. I previously used Serverfly.com and had fewer problems (although the server did go down in the middle of use by a class in the lab three or four times).
Hi Dan,
You won't get a satisfying solution for 10$/month in my opinion. Moodle is definitly no "standard" application and needs much RAM-ressources and CPU-time. A hoster can minimize all these problem, but a moodle user like you will obtain too much resources from a shared server. If you want to have it cheap, so try to setup your own local server at your school network.
If you want to find a reliable webhost checkout for the following:
You won't find too much reliable webhosts for 10$/month. It has something like: I'd like to drive a ferrari, but all costs including service (support), fuel (bandwith) have to be a 5$/100 miles - otherwise the ferrari is a bad car...
A good but expensive choice is a moodle partner...
regards,
Maik
If you want to find a reliable webhost checkout for the following:
- ask for a demo account first
- check out this account with 30 clients online performing a test/quiz simultaneously
- then ask for a contract
You won't find too much reliable webhosts for 10$/month. It has something like: I'd like to drive a ferrari, but all costs including service (support), fuel (bandwith) have to be a 5$/100 miles - otherwise the ferrari is a bad car...
A good but expensive choice is a moodle partner...
regards,
Maik
That is reasonably heavy usage and I think you would hard-pushed to get anything reliable for 10 dollars a month. A slightly more expensive but possibly viable alternative would be a Virtual Private Server. Atjeu provide some good ones but there are lots around. Would be at least 30 dollars are so and would involve more work but may possibly do the trick. Would also very much depend on how processor-intensive the tasks being performed by 30 simultaneous users would be.
This recent thread in this forum which provides a script to do some testing on PHP and database calls may shed some light on server performance. Not the same as real world experience and needs to be tested on a non-production instance of Moodle really to be safe. I used the script to test out £80 a year hosting solution. You can see the script results here.
We have had no speed issues with 11 concurrent users using the moodle at once sometimes all doing the same test at the same time when I am using it for dedicated face to face courses. It has to be daid though we mostly get a few log ins a day in general use so it suits us for that purpose.
We have had no speed issues with 11 concurrent users using the moodle at once sometimes all doing the same test at the same time when I am using it for dedicated face to face courses. It has to be daid though we mostly get a few log ins a day in general use so it suits us for that purpose.
Hey Dan,
I ran into the same issue. I have a multi-step solution, 1st I'm allowing the students to access Moodle in a round robin fashion of 5-6 students at a time in 15-20 minute blocks, 2nd I'm building my own server which I'll maintain myself (after being a sys admin for 15 years, I don't trust other sys admins - teaching has its definite rewards) and will migrate over during a teacher workday/weekend.
Ultimately if you want all of your students on a single server you'll have to either purchase space on a machine or build your own.
I ran into the same issue. I have a multi-step solution, 1st I'm allowing the students to access Moodle in a round robin fashion of 5-6 students at a time in 15-20 minute blocks, 2nd I'm building my own server which I'll maintain myself (after being a sys admin for 15 years, I don't trust other sys admins - teaching has its definite rewards) and will migrate over during a teacher workday/weekend.
Ultimately if you want all of your students on a single server you'll have to either purchase space on a machine or build your own.
A typical current generation single CPU server with 2Gigs of ram can take from 40-60 concurrent users accessing Mysql from a Linux based server without to much issue. The cost of a server like this (managed) is far in excess of $10 per month. The virtual private server will work but with that level of usage, it may slow down unless the above "Round Robin" approach is used. A leased,self managed server with an Internet backbone connection can be had for as low as $69 per month. (add $35-50 for management if needed)
Building your own server is a viable alternative provided a couple criteria are met.
1. Run on a LAN... (see next) or
2. At least a 1.5mps (T1) up line for Internet access, otherwise users are going to be stifled by slow response. Even at 1.5Mps, there will be bottlenecks.
Most Internet connections simply are not adequate for a server to operate very well.
The biggest issue with a LAN setup is security. The equipment needs to be physically secured (a typical computer lab or classroom is not adequate). If the school can house your server with the schools servers, then you are getting there.
Dan,
I too have a shared managed account with siteground.com (100 users across 25 or so courses moodle 1.5x). I have had no complaints until the last month or so and am experinecing many issues similar to what you are having (random page timeouts, failed downlaods, etc.) . Siteground did a server migration a month or so back and that is about the time the problems started. We may look at their VPS service.
Ken
It seems that moodle has cached the same illness of the Microsoft software. It
grows in a non sustainable way. I'm sure that is possible to offer the
capabilities that moodle has with less demanding servers needs. Is there
someone working in this direction?
grows in a non sustainable way. I'm sure that is possible to offer the
capabilities that moodle has with less demanding servers needs. Is there
someone working in this direction?