Evaluating the performance of Moodle on a Ubuntu 64-bit OS with SSD

Riyad

Evaluating the performance of Moodle on a Ubuntu 64-bit OS with SSD

I shall start by thanking Nicolas for this chef-d'oeuvre. Given the impact of Moodle on a Pi can have for education in remote areas, I was tried to find out if we can improve the performance of the Web Server to support more users and provide better response time.
I tried running Moodle on a Ubuntu 64-bit OS with SSD to find out if the performance would improve. I guess many other users might be tempted to perform same tests. I made a video to share my findings with the hope that this might help others. Same is available on:

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMDy_Yv33C8)

The detailed table results together with its individual Apache Jmeter Dashboard reports could be consulted on https://progressivewebserver.com/?page_id=37. The Report was extended to include Resource usage. My findings, Moodlebox is perfectly optimized. Manually installing a Moodle on a 64-bit OS for performance gains is not worth the hassle for a small cohort size. A limitation of the RPI4 might be the CPU itself.

Shared here with the hope that the information in the video and linked webpage helps the community.

Ratna

Riyad Thanks for the work, very valuable.

For my understanding, the work consists of:
a) benchmarking MoodleBox as it is, that is RaspberryPi OS, 32 bit
b) you ported MoodleBox to Ubuntu for Raspberry Pi, 64 bit
c) benchmarked the ported version
c) on the hardware Raspberry Pi 4 Model B with 4 GB, with and without over-clocking, with SD and SSD
d) the benchmarking client was JMeter running in a single machine, connecting to the MoodleBox via its Wi-Fi hotspot.
Am I correct?

I would like to see a detailed report so that others can reproduce the results. Also, is the ported version available somewhere?

Riyad

Thanks for going through. This is correct for section a,b,c,d.
For the script, it was ported some five months ago and is available on:
SpicyMoodlebox
The script is not perfect but it does the job. I tested the script again with Ubuntu 20.04.2 and Moodle Benchmark, the script works fine and the Processor processing speed is 0.187 on Benchmark.

Please bear with me for the detailed report, I am submitting my findings as a paper to make sure we reach a wider audience and it would be embarrassing for me if all the details are already published here. I did publish some information in a book titled Portable & Home hosted Learning Management Systems but the information might be too basic for our reader here. The book which is at its infancy is a long-term vision to support education in remote areas and developing Countries through the use of portable LMS.

For those who want to reproduce the results, I shall also share the automation scripts and method to facilitate the testing process and reduce the spent time. Again, please be patient with me, same shall be shared soon after the publication.
Below is my Benchmark results on Ubuntu-20.04.2 64-bit SD card for our friends here.

Ratna

Riyad Don't worry about the detailed report. I was not meaning myself, can't promise to go through the steps, which I assume to be long and repetitive. ;-)

Will definitely have a look at SpicyMoodleBox though.

About the Moodle Benchmark: I did a comparison amoung the various R Pi models myself. The benchmark is useful to see whether there are weak points in a Moodle installation, but the final number is no indication of scalability. That is of no significance to our application szenarios, portable LMSes in remote areas, but still it is fun to get the maximum out of a tiny computer.

Keep up the good work! Hoping to hear more in the future.