Tools for improving the performance of Moodle and

Tools for improving the performance of Moodle and other PHP applications Denis Boroja, Manager EAAS Peter Rowley, Director A&I Ellio Mourinho, Programmer EAAS Enterprise Academic Applications, Applications & Integration, 1 University Information Technology, York University, Toronto

York University • York University is a large comprehensive university located in the northwest part of Toronto. It was established in 1959 as a non-denominational institution. • It is a community with 48, 000 undergraduate students, 5, 900 graduate students and 7, 000 support / admin staff. • Each of York’s eleven Faculties is steeped in rich individual tradition and enjoys a high degree of autonomy 2

York and E-Learning • The Provost has been supporting e-learning with a special initiative • The initiative is supported by four distinct units: • Learning Technology Services (UIT) • Teaching Commons (Provost) • Enterprise Academic Application Services (UIT) • Instructional Technology Centre (UIT) 3

Moodle @ York • Pilot version 1. 5 introduced in 2005 with a few Faculties. • First production version (v 1. 6) introduced in 2006. • Current 2014 Version is 2. 5. 3+ with My. SQL 5. 5 • All 11 different faculties are represented in Moodle. 4

Moodle @ York Course Load Increase Year over Year 5 Academic Year # courses used Yo. Y 2009 1, 605 - 2010 2, 043 27% 2011 2, 504 23% 2012 2, 880 15% 2013 3, 045 6%

Moodle @ York Students Load Year over Year 6 Academic Year # of users Yo. Y 2009 41, 517 - 2010 49, 531 19% 2011 52, 081 5% 2012 52, 498 1% 2013 54, 297 3%

Moodle @ York Instructor Load Year over Year 7 Academic Year # of Instructors Yo. Y 2009 1, 029 - 2010 1, 142 11% 2011 1, 938 70% 2012 1, 809 -7% 2013 1, 973 9%

Moodle History at York 8

Core Application Architecture • Production • Application Servers • Four Virtual Application Servers running on Ubuntu 12. 04 • 20 GB RAM, 4 Virtual CPU Cores • 20 GB local storage, external filer with 4. 1 TB • Database Servers • 2 Physical servers running on Ubuntu 12. 04 • Master / Slave with real time replication service • 72 GB of RAM, 300 GB local, 230 GB for My. SQL • Load Balancer • LVS – configured for 25% traffic for each Application Server • Use of Maintenance Pages during outages. 9

External Links • Camtasia Relay • Lecture recording tool used by instructors • Stores link to a recording in Moodle • Library • Link to York. U library application. • Returns list of resources, appropriate links and study resources. • Turnitin • Assignment submission and plagiarism detection tool 10

Architecture Diagram 11

Tools • www. Site 24 x 7. com • Third party application used for Application heartbeat monitoring. Records and tracks applications outages. • App. Dynamics • Third party application used for overall application / code monitoring. Monitors and records application performance. Used for troubleshooting and optimization. • Google Analytics • Used to monitor user interactions, response time and the application load. 12

Tools (cont. ) • Nagios • System level monitoring. (CPU, RAM, Traffic, Filer mounts etc) • j. Meter • used for performance testing in QA environments. Simulates up to 150% of the estimated max load. 13

App. Dynamics • Dashboard – real-time view of the application 14

App. Dynamics • Dashboard – real-time view of the application 15

App. Dynamics – Transaction Dashboard 16

App. Dynamics – Transaction Overview Good day 17 Bad Day

App. Dynamics – Transaction Overview Good day 18 Bad Day

App. Dynamics • Transaction Level Monitoring 19

App. Dynamics – Transactions Demo LIVE DEMO 20

App. Dynamics – Reporting 21

App. Dynamics – Reporting 22

App. Dynamics – User Dashboard 23

App. Dynamics – Configuration 24

App. Dynamics – Configuration 25

Other application monitoring tools • New Relic • Dyna. Trace Would anyone care to share their experiences with these? 26

Google Analytics • Used to measure and observe user interaction with application. • Measure average application page response time. • Measure current user volume (5 minute span). • Track user behavior. • GOAL: Ensure that the application web pages can support and carry the user volume. 27

Google Analytics – Real-time 28

Google Analytics – Site Speed 29

Google Analytics – Page Details 30

Performance Tuning Changes • Session and Application caching using Memcache and Memcache. D • Fine tune mdl_log. • My. SQL inno. DB Changes • Memory increase • LDAP server improvements • My. SQL Oracle Support 31

Q/A dboroja@yorku. ca prowley@yorku. ca mourinho@yorku. ca 32