Note: You are currently viewing documentation for Moodle 1.9. Up-to-date documentation for the latest stable version is available here: Performance FAQ.

Performance FAQ

From MoodleDocs


How do you define "concurrent users"?

As has been repeatedly stressed in the Hardware and performance fourm, the load on the server depends primarily on the number of concurrent users, not on the total number of users neither the number of users logged-in at a given time. In this context, the concurrent users are those for whom the server actively doing something (see Wikipedia Concurrency). It may by processing a webpage written in PHP, querrying the database or simply transfering a file.

How do I benchmark a Moodle-site?

You can ofcourse benchmark each component of the software stack, starting from the operating system upto the database https://docs.moodle.org/en/Performance#Obtain_a_baseline_benchmark . But there is no easy formula to deduct the maximum number of concurrent users from those data.

There is a PHP-script [2] circulating amoung the Moodle-community which calculates a ballpark figure. Take the current version from 1. March 2007 posted here [3]. Please note running this script on a production server may have side-effects, you are strongly adviced to run it on a test-site.

[2] http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=57028

[3] http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=57028#p296907

What are PHP-accelerators?

For the definition see Wikipedia [4]. Read the Performance documentation [5] for possible software.

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP_accelerator

[5] https://docs.moodle.org/en/Performance#PHP_performance

How do I cluster Moodle?

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=57202

How do I replicate Moodle?

My site is very slow, what should I do?

First find out "how slow". (The theme-trick here).

The next question is, whether the performance is normal or something malfunctions. There are many things which can malfunction:

  • hardware
  • crashed filesystems, specially network filesystems
  • memory leaks or other crashes in the system
  • bug in Moodle
  • corrupted database

Or your performance could be "normal" under the given circumstances:

  • Is it a root-server, dedicated server, virtual (shared) server
  • How much RAM, processing power do you have?
  • What is the software stack you use? (Unix or Windows, Apache or IIS, MySQL, PostgreSQL or SQL-Server, ...?)
  • how many concurrent users slows the system down
  • what modules/activities they use? Check Performance of different Moodle modules
  • is your networt setup property? DNS, firewalls. Also check local firewalls and other local security tools?

Obtain a baseline benchmark and compare it with the published figures.

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=102978 http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=103040

What are the requirements for N users?

A moodle setup for 10K simultaneous users

How many users will my installation support?

See above What are the requirements for N users?

Which operating system is the best?

What is the best webserver?

Should I go for 64 bit or is 32 bit OK?

What hosting provider do you recommend?

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=99405 I I