Probable Usage

Probable Usage

by Chris U -
Number of replies: 7

Hi Hi,

I have been examing and toying around with Moodle for some time now... I am seriously considering Moodle in a University enviroment, composed of roughly 500+ students enrolling in a basic ICS course. What kind of recommended computer power does Moodle need to operate at such a high level?

-Chris

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In reply to Chris U

Re: Probable Usage

by Martin Dougiamas -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
About this much:

|-------------------------------------------|

wink

Seriously, there are many factors and possible optimisations involved. On a well-set-up Linux-based system using PHP-Accelerator I'd guess a Pentium III of some kind with lots of RAM (over 256Mb eg 512Mb) should be fine to handle any usage peaks you might have without any apparent slowdown.

No-one's done any formal benchmarking yet though!
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Probable Usage

by Robert Bell -

Greetings,

Background  
The Community College I work for is presently approving a plan to initiate online course offerrings. We have a grant from the federal goverment and part of the grant is to increase our enrollment using distance education. Moodle is one of the CMS possibilities (which I, personally, am wildly enthusiastic about and presently have running on a Mac OX testing server).

Questions

  1. The server has not been purchased (will be HP) so any suggestion for an ideal set-up?
  2.  Software will be Apache/MySQL/PHP but what is a PHP-Accelerator?
  3. At first there will be perhaps 4 courses fully online and several (10?) FTF classes using the system. With that much activity is a 20 hours per week enough time to manage the system?

Hope these questions are not too general - any ideas or experience that would help will be appreciated. g'day.

Bob 

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In reply to Robert Bell

Re: Probable Usage

by Gunther Dippe -
Incomplete answer but others can hopefully add the missings parts.

1. I'm not sure what you mean by an ideal set-up.
2. See http://www.php-accelerator.co.uk/ for more info. Works like a charm on my Linux and FreeBSD boxes.
3. Is it pure sysadmin work?
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In reply to Gunther Dippe

Re: Probable Usage

by Martin Dougiamas -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
1. Use Linux if at all possible (simply because of the amount of support available on the Internet), and get a decent amount of RAM: 512Mb, even 1Gb. Install Moodle using CVS (for easy updating!), switch off unnecessary daemons, tune your Apache configuration to suit usage, automate all your backups, use redundant disks (eg RAID).

2. Gunther answered this.

3. Once a system is running properly then time needed to manage the system is almost nothing. It depends on how much involvement you want to have with hacking/upgrading your Moodle installation and helping teachers design/expand their courses.
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In reply to Gunther Dippe

Re: Probable Usage

by Robert Bell -

Gunther,

Thanks for your rapid reply and the URL for the PHP-Accelerator !

As I mentioned in my previous post, we are buying a new server. My job (among other tasks) is training instructors to use classroom technology and recently for delivering classes over IPv (tele-conferencing).  I'm very green about the server part of the online equation but I have been reading and experimenting with my testing server so as not to appear totally ignorant when negotiating with the IP folks (this is a big change for our school and they are under-staffed and poised to say no).

What I meant by ideal set-up?  This was a response to Martin's suggestion ---

"On a well-set-up Linux-based system using PHP-Accelerator I'd guess a Pentium III of some kind with lots of RAM (over 256Mb eg 512Mb) should be fine to handle any usage peaks you might have without any apparent slowdown".

  • How much Ram (is there ever enough)?
  • Any other helpful programs like PHP accelerator?
  • How much Hard Drive Space- 30, 40, 60 GB?
    etc.

You asked, is it pure sysadmin work?  The IP dept will maintain the fire wall, keep the server cool and supplied with power, and restart it if necessary, etc.  During, up to, 20 hours per week,  I will maintian and update all the software associated with the moodle delivery- Apache/MySQL/PHP etc (10 hours?). This will include answering instructor and student questions (10 hours?) by

  • updating tutorials and FAQs (these will be created in advance)
  • organizing a help desk ( I'll have help from counseling services and the learning lab doing this part)
  • training new instructors to use the program (part of this will be included in my instructional design duties and the first instructors will be trained before the courses are online)

I anticipate having about 6+ months before the first classes go live.

Hope this clarifies what I meant... and is staying within the topic.

Thanks again

 

 

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In reply to Robert Bell

Re: Probable Usage

by Gunther Dippe -
I've some experience of HP albeit this is a couple of years ago.
Their lists for sysadmins are by far the best I encountered for any OS. People stay to the topic in a thread. They describe and answer questions very comprehensively. The problem owner always summarizes the thread and also reports back to the list what suggestions s/he got and also which solution was used to solve the problem.
This is not meant as an argument not to choose Linux, rather saying that if somebody "up there" decides to go HP you probably shouldn't have to worry too much.

If you can meet, discuss and also be part of the development process of the courses (using Moodle and starting as soon as possible!) it will ease your burden very much when the courses start. The teachers should as much as possible help their students and your job should be to help the teachers. Otherwise you might end up with a 24/7 job sad

If you haven't yet: Join a mailing list for instructors to get an idea what's discussed in these communities. Here's an example: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/vle.html

I don't know your background and this might be an unneccessary comment.
Teachers are content oriented (and hopefully student centered). Moodle is a flexible form for different teacher and student activities visavi the content. But teachers (if they're not very experienced) tend to retain their classroom thinking and have a hard time to understand that it is a totally different matter to use a virtual learning environment.

The continuation of this thread is better suited in the teacher forum though.
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In reply to Gunther Dippe

Re: Probable Usage

by Martin Dougiamas -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
One thing I'd add is that I believe these days HP hardware usually often ships with Linux, so it's win-win, probably.
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