Thank you!
Moodle for school - hosted? - own server? - can anyone advise?
Number of replies: 21
Hi, I recently installed Moodle to test it out and everything is going great. I now need to think about how best to implement it. I would be installing it for a school of up to 600 users, about 25 course categories and potentially about 180 courses. Until we get it fully up-and-running, I really have no idea of how many simultaneous users there might be or how much traffic, but I think it unlikely that there would ever be more than about 100 concurrent users and typically there might be about 25. I am wondering whether we should splash out on a dedicated server or whether a solution such as Martin offers at moodle.com might be sufficient capacity for us. At first, our requirements are likely to be low, but I also need to plan a bit for the future. My current web host offers a high-capacity solution of 1,000MB disk space and 50GB monthly bandwidth (and less than 20 accounts per server) for a reasonable price. Would this be sufficient / appropriate? Or am I totally off the wall here? I notice that at moodle.com, Martin says that this amount of capacity is more than most sites would need or that few would exceed, but I have no idea what the 'average' might be. I would be most grateful for any advice or suggestions here.
Thank you!
Thank you!
Re: Moodle for school - hosted? - own server? - can anyone advise?
Couple of things you don't cover...
Will your courses be delivered *ONLY* within your school (on you intranet), or will students be able to access them from home. If the latter, what sort of connection to the internet does your school have?
Your hosting specification sounds fine as long as you are not hoping to be using lots of sound or video feeds. For example, this page is about 70K in size, so you can download around 750,000 of these a month, and that's 1,250 per student per month (41 a day), and that's before you consider that graphics and the like will be cached on their machines so in reality it will be more.
I can't say much right now, but there may be a dedicated Moodle hosting services in the UK soon if you are stuck.
Will your courses be delivered *ONLY* within your school (on you intranet), or will students be able to access them from home. If the latter, what sort of connection to the internet does your school have?
Your hosting specification sounds fine as long as you are not hoping to be using lots of sound or video feeds. For example, this page is about 70K in size, so you can download around 750,000 of these a month, and that's 1,250 per student per month (41 a day), and that's before you consider that graphics and the like will be cached on their machines so in reality it will be more.
I can't say much right now, but there may be a dedicated Moodle hosting services in the UK soon if you are stuck.
Re: Moodle for school - hosted? - own server? - can anyone advise?
Thanks, Howard!
I wouldn't want to restrict Moodle to an Intranet - that would be far too limiting and of much less value to our students. We have a NTL broadband Internet connection at school. My home (same town) NTL connection has excellent uptime but the school connection goes 'down' rather too often. For this reason, I think that some kind of managed / hosted dedicated server (if we go for that option) would be a better choice than an in-house one, though this will clearly need to be discussed in detail with the IT support team. Yes, I suppose I am worried about the possibility of staff wanting to upload huge files but, at this early stage, it is difficult to anticipate precisely what our needs will be. Right now, I'm sounding out the options and trying to get a handle on where the best starting position might be.
I wouldn't want to restrict Moodle to an Intranet - that would be far too limiting and of much less value to our students. We have a NTL broadband Internet connection at school. My home (same town) NTL connection has excellent uptime but the school connection goes 'down' rather too often. For this reason, I think that some kind of managed / hosted dedicated server (if we go for that option) would be a better choice than an in-house one, though this will clearly need to be discussed in detail with the IT support team. Yes, I suppose I am worried about the possibility of staff wanting to upload huge files but, at this early stage, it is difficult to anticipate precisely what our needs will be. Right now, I'm sounding out the options and trying to get a handle on where the best starting position might be.
OTP Re: Moodle for school - hosted? - own server? - can anyone advise?
Howard, can you hear that sound? That's the sound of my ears flapping.
Looking forward to the time when you can say more.
Ray
(I've always felt that email addresses in profiles are a fantastic innovation).
Re: Moodle for school - hosted? - own server? - can anyone advise?
There appears to be no unique formula for working out the requirements for running Moodle. I suspect there are just too many variables for this to be an exact science. However, it is clear that a shared environment appears to be not much more than a stepping stone to a dedicated server, when the whole school/institution becomes involved. For many schools I suspect that this is just cloud-cuckooland at the moment, and it has nothing to do with Moodle, but more to do with a paradigm shift in the way that many teachers need to adapt to incorporate Moodle in their everyday 'teaching'.
If the whole instiutution/school has a real 'let's go for it' ethos, then Martin offers a great package, plus support. If you are still at the stage where one of two teachers are trying to change the world, then take time to evaluate Moodle on a smaller scale first, and introduce other users to the natural wonders of Moodle. After all, saving Moodle courses should not present a major hurdle, if you decide to upgrade to a dedicated server option.
Re: Moodle for school - hosted? - own server? - can anyone advise?
You may notice that Martin does not appear to be taking on any new 'customers' at the moment. I don't know if this will change.
Re: Moodle for school - hosted? - own server? - can anyone advise?
I could ask Martin if he has a waiting list. Alternatively, I hear that there might be dedicated Moodle hosting services in the UK soon - that sounds intriguing! 
Re: Moodle for school - hosted? - own server? - can anyone advise?
Hi everyone,
Has there been any move on the "dedicated Moodle hosting service in the UK"?
Any info gratefully received.
Thanks,
Mark
Has there been any move on the "dedicated Moodle hosting service in the UK"?
Any info gratefully received.
Thanks,
Mark
Re: Moodle for school - hosted? - own server? - can anyone advise?
Check out http://moodle.com/hosting/
Currently no-one is offering hosting in the UK, so you could try one of the others there.
Currently no-one is offering hosting in the UK, so you could try one of the others there.
Re: Moodle for school - hosted? - own server? - can anyone advise?
Thanks Martin,
I've looked at those. However it would have to be in the EU (for Data Protection reasons), which only really leaves one possible option (MediaTouch), and my Italian's not hot enough to work out what they're offering.
All the best,
Mark
I've looked at those. However it would have to be in the EU (for Data Protection reasons), which only really leaves one possible option (MediaTouch), and my Italian's not hot enough to work out what they're offering.
All the best,
Mark
Re: Moodle for school - hosted? - own server? - can anyone advise?
Mark, we can speak in English if you need any help from us as Moodle Partner. I am at your disposal to solve any needs or question you may have about Moodle hosting.
Re: Moodle for school - hosted? - own server? - can anyone advise?
I recently came across an organisation offering hosting from Ireland at the Irish moodle moot. Drop me an email if you want and I'll dig out the info for you.
Richard
Re: Moodle for school - hosted? - own server? - can anyone advise?
Hi Everyone,
We have just set up a Moodle Hosting service for the UK. You can find out more by visting www.cyberschool.co.uk
Re: Moodle for school - hosted? - own server? - can anyone advise?
Thanks, Martyn - that's most helpful advice! I might well have been looking at moodle.com but for the fact that Martin is not taking on any new customers. However, my current host has a similar package to Martin's at a similar price. The step to a dedicated server is a somewhat frightening (and expensive) one and the options here need to be considered very carefully. I appreciate what you say about the paradigm shift - natural evolution may be the best way forward here! 
Re: Moodle for school - hosted? - own server? - can anyone advise?
Having read the posts on the concerns of the web hosting requirements for a system like moodle in the teaching world, I wonder why we could not work out as a community a simple mathematical model (similar to an analysis of any commercial IT project requirements) of the operational requirements for a system of this kind. 
To start, we have to define our usage requirements (perhaps prediction) such as the number of students enrolled, courses, and file size and the file transfer traffic per week (or per month) and numbers of activity modules included etc...
Having defined the basic need of the services, we could possibly work out the outcome of the technical operational requirements of the web hosting basic specification to run that particular moodle installation. If we could design a computational program, which can take in the assumption requirements, we will be in a better position to predict what we will need for a minimal web server specification.
I understand that to derive the mathematical model will need experiment for tuning to be more accurate. I am sure that once this model has been available to our community we could refine the model at a later stage. This model could benefit all of us not only in the estimate of the running cost but also some means of monitoring the operational efficiency of the system provided by the hosting services.
I hope this idea could be taken up by the community.
Tak
Re: Moodle for school - hosted? - own server? - can anyone advise?
Someone must have figured out how to do this already! at least from a guesstimate point of view. How could Martin or others support customers, not to mention quick performance with many simultaneous users on moodle.org, without knowing when servers must be added and which are better.
Re: Moodle for school - hosted? - own server? - can anyone advise?
Does anyone have stats? I'd like to see an estimate of transfer per month per number of students, courses, size of files on the server etc. Maybe someone can share their own stats. It would help to get an idea.
Re: Moodle for school - hosted? - own server? - can anyone advise?
You are welcome to see our stats at http://academies.culver.org/webalizer
Our moodle install is at http://academies.culver.org/moodle You can try to gauge level o' use, etc. May was seeing a lot of use with quizzing and of term assignments. Guest is enabled on the few active sites.
You'll see from the stats that this server has a few other things running, but moodle generates the real traffic.
This "server" is an AMD 1100 with 768 megs of ram and an IDE hard drive. The computer club kids built it from parts as a project.
Re: Moodle for school - hosted? - own server? - can anyone advise?
You are also welcome to visit www.vanhorne.nl , choose info --> bezoekers witch shows you the statistics of webalizer.
Running my own server at school (RH 7.2 ) on a PIII-1000Mhz with 1G (SDRAM) ,
providing Moodle with 650 current members.
Server serves more than only Moodle.
Running my own server at school (RH 7.2 ) on a PIII-1000Mhz with 1G (SDRAM) ,
providing Moodle with 650 current members.
Server serves more than only Moodle.
Re: Moodle for school - hosted? - own server? - can anyone advise?
Goode dag, what leuk, dat ik here en keer nederlands srijven mag. ik hope dat er niet te veele false uitdruijken inzitten;(
wat zeg jij nu,
moie grootjes vanuit oostenrijk
Re: Moodle for school - hosted? - own server? - can anyone advise?
Hallo Leonhard,
Ik ga me niet wagen om iets in het Duits te schrijven ...
I will continue in English.
Can only recommend Moodle for you, don't hesitate to ask ...
Greetings
Ik ga me niet wagen om iets in het Duits te schrijven ...
I will continue in English.
Can only recommend Moodle for you, don't hesitate to ask ...
Greetings
Re: Moodle for school - hosted? - own server? - can anyone advise?
Hi,
we are a school in austria www.eurogym.eduhi.at and i `ve got a new dual xeon intel (5300) server last week. We are working in a pilot project for elearning from the austrian government. Since the last 2 years we are working with Blackboard on central server in vienna. Our experience is, that a central server is useful for learning-projects over borders. In production with teachers and pupils at ordinary skills, you have often the problem that they have big files. To keep the frustration level low a high bandwith in the school is useful. Also to bind on LDAP keeps the administration level low. We prefer a schoolinternal solution. For external work with other schools we are wishing a form of moodle which is integrating moodle plattforms on different servers. Explanation: each school is working on the own server. For big projects on central server the connections to the schoolservers is possible. So on the central server exists a database where the schooladmins can logon their schoolmoodle. The pupils logon on the schoolmoodle, if necessary i can connect to other schools easily, without creating new accounts on other moodleinstallations.
High perfomance hardware exists. We dont have the software. I am the elearning coordinator on our school, i have studied biology, i couldn`t do this. I have ideas. If someone can do this work, please tell me. Our ministery has money for such work, i know some important people.
For interested ones:
in austria a project of 30 schools are developing end evaluation sequences for elearning platforms. In may 2005 we have to decide which platform we are working with in the next years. My favorite is moodle. Generally we are watching and discussing support here in this forums.