What hardware for moodle?

**j17sparky** · 10th March 2008, 03:09 PM

Ive been asked to price up a server to run on a DMZ, or hosting (but id rather keep it onsite), for a max of 1500 concurant users using moodle.

Personally i doubt we'll come close to 1500 users but thats what ive been asked so... What do you think, what sort of spec am i looking at for the server? It will be on linux, debian or ubuntu probably.

Sorry for the vague requirements but you know how it is in schools

cheers

**Jona** · 10th March 2008, 03:14 PM

Specs for true 1500 concurrent users are going to be HUGE, your looking at a cluster there with load balancing, etc, etc I think you'll have to scale it back to something more realistic.

I do have the following recommendations:
A decent server class motherboard
Lots of memory (8gb?)
A dual core duo CPU
Fast Hard drive (SATA with a decent raid 5 card?) - Need to check you get one compatible with Debian.

sorry I can't give you any more specific help, our Moodle server is unfortunately windows :-//

Cheers
Jona

**j17sparky** · 10th March 2008, 03:30 PM

I was thinking 1500 users is a fair amount like! lol

If anyone can give me their spec, number of concurant users and how well it performs thatd be grand.

Also how much HD space do you use, i have no idea really? Obviously the OS etc isnt too much but what about content? Do users store lots of files on it? Cheers

**j17sparky** · 11th March 2008, 08:57 AM

bump bump

**zag** · 11th March 2008, 09:13 AM

Hardware
Dual Xeon CPU
4gb Memory
500gb Hard disk

Software
Windows 2003 R2 with WAMP + Moodle 1.9 stable

This setup is only 1 week old, and should be capable of running hundreds of concurrent users. Doubt we will ever get that many though.

1500 users at the same time? Wow thats alot!

**Geoff** · 11th March 2008, 09:23 AM

Our VLE has been running on a Fujitsu Siemens RX220 rack mount server for over a year now.

http://www.computers.us.fujitsu.com/...primergy/rx220

The processor option we went for at the time was 2x AMD Opeteron 246's. I also have a slightly wierd hard drive configuration. A 75G boot drive and a 250G data drive. This was due to moodle outgrowing the original 75G drive. I have another 250G drive waiting to go in to replace the 75G at which point I can raid1 the drives and have a sensible setup.

Softwarewise:

Ubuntu 6.06LTS
Moodle 1.9
Apache 2.0.55
PHP 5.1.2
MySQL 5.0.22

Moodle stats:

75G data in 353 courses
2,418 users

Max concurrent users is ~200.

**RobFuller** · 11th March 2008, 09:25 AM

If you’re really going to have that many concurrent users I would recommend the databases be on a separate server. Also more drives you put into your raid(s) the better your speeds will be.

Also I would defiantly think cluster, as if you have that many people using what these days are mission critical applications then you defiantly want high fault tolerance.

**j17sparky** · 11th March 2008, 09:48 AM

Cheers people. Like i said "im only finding out what ive been asked to find out". I more than hinted to SMT that we wernt going to see every pupil in the school on it at once but whether he didnt understand my point or honestly does antisipate thjis taking off i dont know.

Cheers so far people but keep it coming :beer: