My Moodle Project is being piloted in-house instead of through a hosting company. I can only use existing parts to create the server(s).
So here are my two options. I am looking for some opinions as what would be the most stable and support the most connections. Assume that all Modules are installed and at anytime must support upto 25 concurrent users. I will Run Ubuntu Server.
1. 2-PCS
P4 2.4 gig with 1.5 Gigs of Ram 2 40 Gig drives - both on IDE BUS 1 in a master slave configuration. This machine would hold the database.
P4 2.4 gig with 1 Gigs of Ram 2 40 Gig drives - both on IDE BUS 1 in a master slave configuration. This machine would hold Apache and Moodle. Plus the moodledocs.
2. Consolidate. P4 2.4 gig with 2 Gigs of Ram 4 40 Gig drives. 1 Drive on ide bus 1 and the other three on idea bus 2. The Bus 2 drives would be set to a RAID 5. But it would be a software RAID. Drive 1 would hold the OS. The RAID would hold moodle and mysql and moodledocs.
I have two PIII IBMS but there drives are slow. I was going to use them to back up the system. They only have 512 Ram each.
Let me know if you have an opinion. If the pilot server works out for a few courses, I can get a sweet server in the budget the next time around.
Tony D.
That's plenty of beef for 25 concurrent users, assuming they are not using the Moodle-Server for chatting (chat module). So any of the strategies you mention will do.
May be the question is, how can I get the maximum out of these hardware? You have already taken a step in the right direction by choosing Linux (Ubuntu) as the OS. Try not to run a GUI. Also see http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-linux-memory.html?ca=dgr-lnxw07LinuxMemory
If you plan to go on production, personally I would take an "evolutionara" approach.
- Version 1 but install _everything_ in one server, say the p4 with 1.5 GByte RAM. Don't worry too much about partitioning or RAID.
- Build the second machine (1 GByte) as a test server and a fail-over solution.
- Monitor the first server carefully under real loads. If it hits the ceiling, which is unlikely, consider shifting the DBMS to the second server. As a general rule: Apache/PHP need RAM, MySQL CPU power and disk performance. In any case, consider a PHP accelerator before doing that.
Now you have plenty of time to build your "sweet server" and worry about administrative issues ;-(
May be the question is, how can I get the maximum out of these hardware? You have already taken a step in the right direction by choosing Linux (Ubuntu) as the OS. Try not to run a GUI. Also see http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-linux-memory.html?ca=dgr-lnxw07LinuxMemory
If you plan to go on production, personally I would take an "evolutionara" approach.
- Version 1 but install _everything_ in one server, say the p4 with 1.5 GByte RAM. Don't worry too much about partitioning or RAID.
- Build the second machine (1 GByte) as a test server and a fail-over solution.
- Monitor the first server carefully under real loads. If it hits the ceiling, which is unlikely, consider shifting the DBMS to the second server. As a general rule: Apache/PHP need RAM, MySQL CPU power and disk performance. In any case, consider a PHP accelerator before doing that.
Now you have plenty of time to build your "sweet server" and worry about administrative issues ;-(
I'd use the machine with more RAM for Apache/Moodle not database. The more simultanous users you have the more RAM the server needs.
Don't put two drives on the same channel and expect double performance... with IDE two drives in Raid 0 on the same channel will not yield much if any increase in performance to a single drive. If you are going to do RAID, you need to invest in another two IDE cables and put 1 drive per channel. Since you are using 40g drives that means that they are probably old, which also means that they may fail within the next year or two, therefore you probably should put them in a Raid 1 array, which has roughly the same write speed as a single drive but you also get fault tolerance (one drive can drop out and your server will still function) and a bit faster read speed.
Also, software raid has a lot more overhead than hardware raid and I don't think it does automatic rebuilding or hot-swapping... so you might be better off selling both/all of your computers and investing in a nice new machine with SATA Raid and a dual-core processor. You could even keep the ram you have if you went with a socket 939 based system. Otherwise, the backup system is a good idea, pump one of them full of ram with a Raid 1 array, the backup would have only 512 ram but if your main went down you could pull ram from it
... I would also keep the backup system up-to-date with the primary so that you don't have a lot of work to do to get it online.
Good Luck
Also, software raid has a lot more overhead than hardware raid and I don't think it does automatic rebuilding or hot-swapping... so you might be better off selling both/all of your computers and investing in a nice new machine with SATA Raid and a dual-core processor. You could even keep the ram you have if you went with a socket 939 based system. Otherwise, the backup system is a good idea, pump one of them full of ram with a Raid 1 array, the backup would have only 512 ram but if your main went down you could pull ram from it
Good Luck