Alex Büchner's talk from the Moodlemoot in Dublin about multi-tenancy

1. Alex Büchner
@mcbuchner
Multi-Tenancy Support
in Moodle 2.x

2. Moodle
1
Moodle Moodle
… 2
Central
Moodle Moodle
5 3
Moodle
4

3. Multi-tenancy in Moodle 2.3
Tenant

4. docs.moodle.org/dev/Multitenant_support
MDL-28946
 August 2011
“It should be possible to implement this in 2.2dev…”
 January 2012
“This is obviously much much longer and more
complex than originally envisaged”
 March 2012
“Multi-tenancy has been dropped in 2.3.
It turned out to be more trouble than it was worth…”

5. Central Instance
Settings
User Management Themes
Modules
Course Management Reports
Code
Local Instance(s)

7. User & Course Management
 How is user information stored?
LDAP / MS-AD / database / external system
 Are user names unique?
 Will courses be managed centrally, locally or both?
 Who is allowed to “see” what?

8. User & Role Web Services

9. Settings
 Global vs. local admin settings
 “Freeze” values in in config.php
 E.g. $CFG->loginhttps=false;
 Flavours

10. Modules & Code
 Are all instances code-identical?
 Changes to the central core code?
 Changes to the local core code?
 Do all instances require a separate URL?

11. Centralised code
 Web server configuration
 Separate vhost for each Moodle instance
 DocumentRoot identical for all entries
 Moodle setup (config.php)
<?php // Moodle configuration file
$moodle_host = $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'];
require_once(„/etc/moodles/‟.$moodle_host.‟_config.php‟);
 Individual config.php‟s in /etc/moodles
 $CFG->dirroot same as DocumentRoot

12. Distributed code
Central Local
git fetch
/usr/bin/php admin/cli/maintenance.php --enable
git merge origin/cvshead
/usr/bin/php admin/cli/upgrade.php --non-interactive
/usr/bin/php admin/cli/maintenance.php --disable

13. Other aspects
 Themes (central / local)
 Reporting (central/ local)
 Backups
 Cohorts?
 Import of existing instances?
 Support!
Resources
http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Multitenant_support
http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-28946
http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Web_services_Roadmap
http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Moodle_flavours
http://docs.moodle.org/22/en/Git_for_Administrators
http://docs.moodle.org/22/en/Cohorts

14. Checklist
Criteria Options Impact
User Management central / local External Management (LDAP / Web Services)
Usernames unique yes / no Separate instances required
Visibility open / closed Separate instances required
Course management central / local Separate system required
Admin settings central / local / hybrid Control
Modules 1:n / n:n GIT
Code modifications central / local / no GIT
URL central / sub-domain / separate Web server configuration
Themes For each tenant / one-for-all Separate instances required
Reporting local / across sites Separate report generator
… … …

15. Alex Büchner
Twitter: @mcbuchner
Thank you
www.synergy-learning.com