Moving VLE/Moodle from CLEO to our servers

[happymeal]

Afternoon all!

 

As part of our updating things over here, we've decided to move the VLE/Moodle from CLEO to our servers.

 

I've been tasked with doing this, as it's new to me and a good way of learning how it all works as I've not touched VLE's before this job.

 

Firstly, I need to backup the data that's already on the VLE/Moodle hosted by CLEO - I honestly have no idea how to do this, but would love to learn how to! Has anyone else done this? I've seen a few posts (Moodle migration - MoodleDocs) but I'm having trouble trying to relate to this!

 

Once I have that, we're looking at setting it up on our side.

 

I've had a look in the How-To part, but can't see anything for this - once I've done it I'll pay it back by knocking up a how-to guide!

[Achandler]

The guide there is fairly decent. I will presume that you have a linux box, with apache and MYSQL or Postgre SQl installed.

 

I'm assuming that the bits you are worried about are backing up the database and then moving the files.

 

I would suggest you put the site in maintenance mode and ring CLEO, most providers will an SQL backup and provide you with it, this is the hardest part. Once they provide you with this, you can copy all the files from your current Moodle installation via the FTP site.

 

Once you have all the files and the database, then you can put these onto your new server , firstly copy all the files into place, the moodle files will usually go within /var/www (on Linux), and then restore the SQL database.

 

After you have done the above you may need to change the config.php file to point to the new locations of the installation, the site should now be accessible locally. Then you can go about publishing the website.

 

If you have never used Apahce2 before to host a website, then i would suggest creating a website quickly on the linux box before starting any of this job so you can understand the steps you take to get the website working.

 

If you are using IIS, then i suggest the same, you make a site so you understand the steps.

 

I don't know how much detail you require, or what OS you are going to host it on, so I won't elaborate more, but I'm happy to help.

[poltawski]

Hi happymeal,

 

Your Moodle site is made up of a) the database b) the 'moodledata' files and c) the moodle code including custom modules and themes.

 

I'd be a little bit cautious if you want to take this on without prior experience of moving or maintain a Moodle as it does require some work to ensure its kept secure and up to date. So please do conduct a test migration and make sure you are able to stay on top of it!

 

It terms of getting the data from CLEO, we have migrated a number of schools over to LUNS hosting. They have been making a charge to schools to get this data, so you will want to be aware of this - and I suggest to request a breakdown of the charges to ensure you are happy with what they are charging for (in my personal view charging schools to get access to their own data is unjustifiable and lamentable).

[glennda]

I don't see how they can charge you to get your own data! When I moved from atomwide to our internal hosting i also converted all the user accounts to ldap via modifying the mdl_user account, i also changed the usernames from our lea provided ones to our school internal ones using a rather complex excel spreadsheet which compared a spreadsheet of users from AD and then the moodle users. It then confirmed the firstname/surname matched and then copied the username over. This worked pretty well and all i needed to do was look through and find the few that had double barrelled names as this caused an issue (our lea didn't have hyphens we did) so we had no matches for those students. All in all the users where transferred and its now sitting on my box rather happily.

 

Toby

[darkest_star]

CLEO will charge as the backup ability is removed so you could not even get to the full backup option without being given a "decomitioning" charge for engineer time and giving you access to an ftp link with password.

 

I think charging for full access to our data is out of order, but we needed to make th move away from CLEO so we paid it just to break free

 

We decided against in house hosting even though we have the capacity as for us strategically it made more sense to spread the risk if the school was closed (snow etc) and we were runnning lessons we would hope an external source would be more resiliant etc

 

If you have little Moodle experience please approach with caution as you are also responsible for security and updates another reason why we have kept our Moodle hosted else where.