Moodle - Your server setups?

[siuko]

I have just been given the go ahead to start looking at implementing a moodle system as our VLE. Yay!! and Oh no in the same sentence!!

 

Yay its Moodle!!

 

Oh no!! I've got a fair bit of work to do!

 

Could anyone who already runs moodle as a VLE please post details about their setup.

 

I have been reading about server specs, performance, scaling etc and was just wondering what people were using in the real world.

 

Could you post as much detail as possible. Especially...

 

Full Server Specs?

Do you us multiple servers? (Example 1 Database, 1 Webserver etc)

How many total users? How many concurrent users (concurrent seems to big one for spec)

Which OS? (I normally use ubuntu server for proxies, websites etc)

 

Any info you can provide would be very helpful.. Thanks

Edited November 16, 2010 by siuko

[Achandler]

We have a Dell R200 Server:

Intel X3370 (Quad)

4gb RAM

2x 500gb SATA HDDS (Raided to make 1)

 

It runs currently Ubuntu 9.1 but i've run Moodle on later additions.

 

This server is both our database and webserver in one using the stanadrd MYSQL and Apache setup, we run our whole Moodle site securely (HTTPS). There are 1100 or so users and the most i've ever seen concurrently must be around 50 or so but I havent the time to actually check up.

 

Biggest regret about our setup? I think the drives we got were to small and would have prefered with 2x 1TB or 4 x 500Gb (depending on server size) because the amount of SCORM material that is literally 5 or 6 Gb shocked me. We've had our box running for about 8 months and have used 200Gb (a lot due to SCORM which shouldn't constantly increase in size) but we also dont have all departments using Moodle yet.

 

Hope that helps.

Edited November 16, 2010 by Achandler
Early morning spelling disasters

[kmount]

Hope you've got a good back up regime...

 

I'd stick with Debian or Ubuntu LTS versions rather than normal releases as they are supported for longer.

[Hightower]

We've been running ours for a year or so.

 

We're using 64-bit Ubuntu on an ESXi box. The VM is allocated 8 gig RAM and this runs easily for 800 users (700 students/100 staff). It's all installed on the same VM, both the app and the database.

 

Backups are a snapshot of the VM to a NAS each night, so restoring takes no time if we need to as it just redumps the image from the night before.

[Achandler]

Our backups that run are a moodledata and SQL database backup nightly, then a a full backup of the server monthly.

 

The reason we are on 9.10 was because of another issue with 10.04 when it first released.

[FN-GM]

When we had it we had it running on:

 

Windows Server 2008 x64 Server

IIS7 & MYSQL - Same Server

2 x Quad Cores

8 GB Ram

[ben604]

We run Moodle on a Casio calculator.

 

Ok not quite, but we have 700 users and run Moodle on a Dual-Core workstation - E4500, 2GB Ram, 1TB Drive, single 1gbit nic! It's backed up fully once a week and incrementally every day.

 

The HDD failed a couple of weeks ago, took 25 minutes to get it back up and running from a backup.

 

It was installed on that originally as a test, but it's pretty much rock solid. That HDD failure is the first time in 2 years that we've had any downtime on Moodle which wasn't planned.

[sister_annex]

We run ours on a virtual 2003 R2 x64 box

-Two Virtual Processors (from a Dual Quad box)

-6Gig of RAM

-MSSQL 2005

-IIS 6

-1.8Tb Drive Space

 

Both Moodledata/SQL and webserver on same box - pretty decent performance for the ~150 concurrent users that we get

 

I'm not a *nix man so had to go with windows but it works fine in our situation though - although took a little more configuring than I suspect a nix box would.

 

As for backups we backup the whole machine every night to our Veeam Backup server

[siuko]

Thanks for all the replies!

 

What is everyone using to backup with and what too?

 

Is it quite easy to setup from linux > windows backup server? (or are people doing disk to disk backups?)

 

Do the poeple running on Virtual Boxes find this option easier? And how much does it cost.

 

Initially I probably wont have huge amounts of cash to get the server - so a Virtual box and a nas backup might be over my budget. (I think my budget 'might' be about £2000-4000 - its very vague at the moment)

 

Edit : Just found out that I have max of £5000

Edited November 16, 2010 by siuko
Added budget :D

[Soulfish]

We're running Moodle on 2 servers. One for the frontend (Apache on CentOS 5.4), the other for the DB (MySQL on CentOS 5.4). Both are VMs running ontop of XenServer 5.6 with 2-CPUS and 4gb RAM.