1. Optimizing the Use of an Integrated LMS:
International Symposium on Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence 2009
Optimizing the Use of an Integrated LMS:
Hardware Evolution through Distributed Computing
Experience from the Universitat de València
Paloma Moreno-Clari, Sergio Cubero-Torres, Agustín López-Bueno

2. Introduction
Current technologies offer almost unlimited and ubiquitous access to contents and they help to improve interaction
However, the provision of top ICT infrastructures and tools does not ensure the fulfillment of educational objectives
Adequate use of these tools that results in a more efficient instruction
Plans and actions must be added to equipment and applications

3. Universitat de València
Hardware four years-evolution to achieve an integrated LMS for all the university community, using distributed open and collaborative hardware

4. Selection Process, Implementation, Integration and Functionalities’ Improvement
The University of Valencia is one of the largest in Spain
2003: The university already counted with an important ICT infrastructure
not integrated under a single platform
it was decided to integrate all these applications under a single LMS
Exhaustive survey of the available platforms
Availability
Standardization
Integration
scalability

5. Open Source .LRN project
A single access point for many of the existing applications
The LMS offered a number of useful services to the academic community
Functionalities were provided for each module:
document repository
event calendar
news section
possibility of creating forums
and chat services
support for notifications
submission of homework
repository for learning objects
application to create Web presentations, weblogs
photo album and a FAQs section

6. Distributed Hardware and Evolution
Firstly implemented over two servers with AMD Opteron dual processors and operating system Debian GNU/Linux
In one of these, the AOL web server and the .LRN application were installed
In the other, it was installed the PostgreSQL (7.4) database, based in Open Source
All hardware changes and evolution decisions have been made taking into account the academic community size, the best performance solutions and the previous experience in such problems of other .LRN community members

7. The First UV LMS Cluster (Academic Year 2005-06)
The progressive LMS implantation, in the Universitat de València particular case, has led to an exponential increase of simultaneous accesses
Scalability problems
The application server inability to manage great memory
Application and performance mistakes
It was decided to install a device to balance the workload between two web servers; to change the Operating System to a 64 bits version; and to rewrite the consultations’ logic.

9. Growth and Stability (Academic Year 2006-07)
In the first four-month period of the academic year there were made changes in the hardware configuration:
the incorporation of an Apache server to deliver the static elements
the database server updating PostgreSQL 8.1.
It was installed a high availability and high performance cluster, and there was improved the device to balance the workload between the web servers
This architecture distributes the application server and the web server work between different machines
The main problems of this configuration were cluster nodes synchronization failures that forced the modification of some code parts

10. Virtualization and Availability (Academic Year 2007-08)
Improvements:
The number of cluster elements was increased to six
The web and applications servers were virtualized to simplify its maintenance and the new elements management
A multimedia server was integrated in the general architecture to stimulate the multimedia contents creation at the platform

11. Conclusions and Future Work
At Universitat de València it’s remarkable the experience with an open source tool and the collaboration work in a world-wide developing community
Universitat de València is one of the largest in Spain adopting an open source platform linked to educative innovation for blended learning, integrated with preexisting systems, and for the use of all academic community
It constitutes the world largest .LRN implementation fully open source (.LRN on top of PostgreSQL).

12. Conclusions and Future Work
Changes and hardware evolution by using distributed computing, have improved the access quality and the system workload
Other changes alternatives, as database replication, combined hardware and software load balancing or cluster elements virtualization have been considered, but there not were taken because they need a more in depth study and research, which is currently being made
The UV platform changes which may be applicable to other .LRN personalization will be made available to the community. So, the .LRN architecture and its functionalities will be continuously improved