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Oodles of Moodle: Virtualising DCU’s Large Scale

Moodle

Fergus Donohue (DCU) &

Orla McGann (HEAnet)

Moodle

• Moodle is the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) in DCU

• LAMP Stack

Background

• Significant in-house expertise - running it internally for 10 years

• Heavily integrated into DCU systems

• When we started this process we were running Moodle 1.9

The Issues

• Student/Staff Moodle surveys

• Outages!

• Push towards online & blended learning, mobile device use and access 24/7 from anywhere

• Significant investment in training academic staff – but this is driving usage and service criticality

• Ever increasing pressure on ISS staff time

Eureka!

• It has become our most important system – treat it as such

• High Level Solution (Part 1 - Today): Upgrade to Moodle 2.4 and have a trusted third party host it on a platform where all single points of failure have been engineered out

• High Level Solution (Part 2 – Future): Get 24/7 support on it

The Brief

• To host a scalable, fault tolerant, resilient Moodle service for DCU’s 20,000 users and 4,300 courses

• To host all key supporting services including authentication

• To allow DCU as much flexibility as is reasonably possible to adapt and meet future challenges (both known and unknown)

DCU’s Requirements

• Resilient, fault tolerant architecture

• No single point of failure for storage

• Ability to expand the service in future

• Federated access with EduGate

–And ideally have this replicated with HEAnet

HEAnet’s Requirements

• A reusable platform design that is easy to deploy and administrate for all clients

• Supported by a Service Level Agreement

DCU’s Requirements

Resilient, fault tolerant architecture

• No single point of failure for storage

• Ability to expand the service in future

• Federated access with EduGate

• And ideally have this replicated with HEAnet

DCU’s Requirements

Resilient, fault tolerant architecture

No single point of failure for storage

• Ability to expand the service in future

• Federated access with EduGate

• And ideally have this replicated with HEAnet

DCU’s Requirements

Resilient, fault tolerant architecture

No single point of failure for storage

Ability to expand the service in future

• Federated access with EduGate

• And ideally have this replicated with HEAnet

DCU’s Requirements

Resilient, fault tolerant architecture

No single point of failure for storage

Ability to expand the service in future

Federated access with EduGate

• And ideally have this replicated with HEAnet

DCU’s Requirements

Resilient, fault tolerant architecture

No single point of failure for storage

Ability to expand the service in future

Federated access with EduGate

And ideally have this replicated with HEAnet

HEAnet’s Requirements

• A reusable platform design that is easy to deploy and administrate for all clients

• Supported by a Service Level Agreement

HEAnet’s Requirements

A reusable platform design that is easy to deploy and administrate for all clients

• Supported by a Service Level Agreement

HEAnet’s Requirements

A reusable platform design that is easy to deploy and administrate for all clients

Supported by a Service Level Agreement

Questions?