Lifecycle management of your Moodle Instances Moodle Moot 2015 Steve Miley University of California, Santa Barbara
Basics Definition: Lifecycle Why upgrade Your SLA Components of a Moodle instance
UCSB Versions Started with Moodle 1.7 Moodle – 3 years ( ) Moodle – 2 years (2011 – 2013) – New hardware/OS Moodle 2.5 – 2.5 years (2013 – 2015) – New hardware/OS Moodle 2.8 – – New OS
Install methods (pros/cons) Upgrade Fresh Install Hybrid – Fresh install and copy key tables
Test upgrade first? Yesterdays Moodle – How to create an identical test environment – Data – Code – Database – Rsync, scripts
Our strategies Simple Upgrade Hybrid – fresh install, copying tables – Challenges of fresh install (retain all customized settings) New Method – clone twice (archive, upgrade)
Leveraging easy import/restores Discuss import vs restore Our faculty are all “self serve” on course site creation/import/restore LSU simple restore ( 1.9 -> 2.5 – pre-create 16,000 backups, create new ACL methods) New Method – so much easier – Hide categories, remove “view hidden course”
Archive Server Configuration/Costs OLD codebases/security/VPNs Reference sites or working sites
New Method Details The 2.8 gradebook drove us to it Fresh install with “hacks” was too difficult Beauty and ease of the solution Storage implications (wasted storage?) Tables that could have data purged Links to access old site Customer Support issues with this method
Course overview before Bio 1 fall 2013 Bio 1 winter 2014 Bio 1 spring 2014 Bio Project Site Bio 1 summer 2015
Course Overview (Archive) Bio 1 fall 2013 Bio 1 winter 2014 Bio 1 spring 2014
Course Overview (New) Bio Project Site Bio 1 summer 2015
Did it work? Is the Jury still out on the success of this strategy?
Moodle Database tuning Referential integrity Log Grade, grade_history Question/quiz attempts/steps Problems with larger tables
Extra files? Moodle does data deduplication In our instance 80% are instructor uploaded files. 10% student assignment submissions
Questions Links to detailed scripts and notes can be found at d= d= THANK YOU!