e-Learning Delivery System

The challenges

ผศ.ดร.เด่นพงษ ์สุดภักดีผู้ช่วยอธิการบดีฝ่ายวิชาการ และ

ผู้อ านวยการส านักนวัตกรรมการเรียนการสอน มหาวิทยาลัยขอนแก่น

Outline

• Delivery system component

• LMS/LCMS Overview

• The challenges

Delivery System Components

• Hardware– Servers and peripherals– Computer network– Content production house

• Software– LMS/LCMS software– Web server software– Scripting software– Database software– Content authoring tools– etc…

• Peopleware– System admin– Graphic design– Content production– Customer service

Hardware

• Server and peripherals

– Web server

– Database server

– Storage

• Computer network

– Load balancer

– Switching hubs

• Storage

– Main and Backup

– Local Storage or SAN

– Hard disk (SATA/SAS)

Software

• Web server– Operating system (Windows/Linux)

– Web server (IIS/Apache)

– Scripting language engine (html/.NET/aspx/php/js/css)

– Cacheing and optimization tools (Zend optimizer/memcache/eAcellerator)

– Server monitoring tools

• Database– Database software

(MySQL/MSSQL/PostgreSQL/Oracle)

– Database engine (MySQL: MyISAM/InnoDB)

– Database monitoring tools

LMS

“An LMS is a software application for the administration, documentation, tracking,

and reporting of training programs, classroom and online events, e-learning

programs, and training content”Ellis, Ryann K. (2009), Field Guide to Learning Management Systems, ASTD Learning Circuits

“An LCMS is a multi-user environment where developers may create, store, reuse,

manage, and deliver digital learning content from a central object repository.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_management_system#Learning_content_management_system_.28LCMS.29

Supporting System Integration

• User authentication

– Self registration

– LDAP/OpenID

– External database

• Enrolment

– Self enrolment

– Internal database

– External database

• LCMS integration (Repository/Media production tool portal/Social media)

The Challenges

• System performance

• Ease of use

• Troubleshooting

• Documentations

System Performance

• No exact solution for the best hardware configuration.

– Focus on RAM HDD CPU

– Separate web server(s) from database server(s)

– SAS HDD (more expensive)

• Require system monitoring

• Require software tuning (web server and database server)

– Database tuning is a crucial task (no exact solution)

• Require optimization and cacheing

Case study

Case study: Equipment

• 5 web servers

• 1 main database server

• 1 database replication and network file sharing server

• 1 system monitoring server

• 1 media streaming server

• 1 video encoding/rendering server

• SAN storage (SAS: 1.5TB and SATA: 8TB)

• Hardware load balancer

Case study: Software

• Web server

– Ubuntu 9.10 server 64-bit

– Apache

– PHP5

– eAccelerator

– Memcache

– Oracle Instant Connection

– MOODLE

• Database server

– CentOS 64-bit

– MySQL Enterprise 5.1.36

Case study: Average Load

• 3,000 users-visits per day

• 30,000 page-views per day

Case study: Monitoring and Alert

• Network Traffic

– Load balancer software

– Cacti

– Google analytics

• Web server monitor and alert

– Cacti

– pingdom (pingdom.com)(push notification)

• Database monitoring and advisory

– MySQL Enterprise Monitor

– Webyog (webyog.com)

Case study : Monitoring screenshots

Case Study: MySQL Tuning

• InnoDB engine

• innodb_buffer_pool_size

• key_buffer_size

• join_buffer_size

• read_buffer_size

• table_cache

• tmp_table_size

• Performance tuning script:

– http://www.day32.com/MySQL/

– http://docs.moodle.org/en/Performance

Case study: MoodleModifications• OCI8 Connection

• Streaming of flv files

• Add twitter block(http://e-learning.kku.ac.th/tweet_grid.zip)

• Add indexing to slow queries (recommended by MySQL knowledge base - https://kb.mysql.com/)

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