[Deploying Sakai] URGENT: I must choose between Sakai and Moodle within 24 hours
Paul Gibbs
pgibbsjr at hotmail.com
Tue Feb 23 19:57:09 PST 2010
Hi Warwick,
Stephen's 4GB-8GB dual-core recommendation will give you room to grow.
If you're used to open source PHP projects, it can be a little
disappointing to find out you'll have a hard time running on less than
3GB. But--the speed and stability of moving to Java/Tomcat is really
rewarding. It's very stable, and it just sort of takes care of itself on
small installations. Part of the trick is setting your environment
variables correctly. I have a small installation (usually no more than a
handful of people on at any given time), and I am running on a VM with
4GB. Here are my Tomcat variables:
export CATALINA_OPTS="-server -Xms1200m -Xmx1200m -XX:MaxPermSize=512m
-Djava.awt.headless=true
-Dorg.apache.jasper.compiler.Parser.STRICT_QUOTE_ESCAPING=false
-Duser.timezone=America/New_York -d64"
You could give these a shot and see how they work out for you.
Paul
On 2/22/2010 10:48 PM, Warwick Chapman wrote:
> Paul
>
> Thanks for that.
>
> I don't suspect at any one time there would be more than 10 current
> users though usually probably just one or two (or none).
>
> If I make the correct platform choice and implement properly, there
> are upwards of 2000 people in this organisation who could make use of
> online learning. The South Africans on list list will attest to the
> fact that since 1994 we've been growing slowly but surely in political
> terms (1.4%-16.6%) and that translates in real terms to more and more
> staff and representatives in the field. In early 2011 we have an
> election coming up which should see another significance increase in
> the number of office bearers flying our flag and needing to be trained
> what flying that flag means (and understanding of our liberal
> democratic ethos, our policies, skills etc).
>
> So we really do need to make the right choice, implement well and have
> the platform and the first course complete by 1 April 2010.
>
> Warwick
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 11:01 PM, Paul Gibbs <pgibbsjr at hotmail.com
> <mailto:pgibbsjr at hotmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Hi Warwick,
>
> I think I can relate when you speak about the uphill challenge in
> setting up Sakai. For me, making the transition from PHP/Apache to
> Java/Tomcat was the biggest challenge I had to overcome. Although
> that transition had little to do with Sakai itself, some of my
> newbie challenges /were /specifically related to understanding the
> way Sakai Project structures its online user community.
>
> The first challenge I found is the use of listservs instead of
> forums. Coming from open source projects, it is odd that the
> community operates through listservs instead of through forums.
> However, my experience has been that the Sakai listservs are /far
> /more responsive than the average open source forum, and the
> participants' willingness to help has been excellent. (Thank you,
> folks--you've been a God-send!) There is also something to be said
> for listservs in terms of convenience--you can take part in the
> conversation without needing to open a browser. I really like the
> convenience of interacting via e-mail instead of needing to do all
> my posting via a web form. Not that it has to be /either/ listserv
> /or /forum--I suppose the Sakai Project could switch to a forum
> product which combined the features of listservs with the
> convenience of forums (e.g., you could choose choose to subscribe
> to a thread, or an entire forum, and then post or respond to your
> subscribed content via e-mail or via the web interface).
> Nabble.com helps with some of this, but that's a third-party tool
> and isn't the first thing you'd think of when you're first
> entering the community.
>
> Getting comfortable with the multiple Sakai web interfaces is also
> confusing at first--sakaiproject.org
> <http://first--sakaiproject.org>, listservs, Nabble, Confluence,
> and Jira all have different interfaces, require multiple user
> accounts, and take some work to get used to. Many open source
> projects have a single website with forums, downloads, wiki, and
> other tools wrapped in the same web interface, making it less
> disorienting when moving between tools. Nevertheless, once again,
> there are some strengths to the way the Sakai Project does some
> things. There is something to be said for having all the tools
> located centrally in Confluence, rather than sending you off to
> everyone's private website to download source code, find
> instructions, etc.
>
> It is also true that the documentation is hard to find, and it is
> incomplete in many places. However, there are some good
> documentation sources out there, if you Google long and hard
> enough. Some people have put a /lot/ of hard work into some of the
> guides, and I greatly appreciate them for it!
>
> As you have already indicated, I think you'll find the Sakai
> community to be a tremendous resource full of helpful people who
> produce robust, secure, scalable products. They stand behind their
> code and are eager to help when they can.
>
> Regarding the creation of new sites--you're right in that the
> admin interface is, once again, difficult to understand. Briefly,
> you'll need to assign permissions per Stephen's response using the
> Realms tool, and then your users will need to use "Site Setup" in
> their "My Workspace" to create new worksites.
>
> How many concurrent users do you think you will have?
>
> Paul Gibbs
> Lansdale, Pennsylvania
>
>
> On 2/22/2010 1:36 PM, Warwick Chapman wrote:
>> Hi All
>>
>> This is my first post so please forgive me should I not be
>> familiar with protocol.
>>
>> Please could I ask for some assistance. I've been tasked with
>> deploying a learning platform for the Democratic Alliance, the
>> official opposition political party in South Africa. We want to
>> use this platform to further and more effectively train all our
>> public representatives and staff around the country.
>>
>> I have a report detailing the outcomes of a scoping working which
>> I can make available to anyone should they be interested but
>> basically, the requirements of the platform are as follows:
>>
>> 1. Online courses
>> 2. Knowledgebase
>> 3. Chat module for learner support
>> 4. Forum
>> 5. Must work on dialup-speed connections, though we expect most
>> people to have 256kbps-4096kbps connections
>> 6. Simple to create and manage courses and assessment
>> 7. Support multiple languages (SA has 11 official languages)
>> 8. Work on mobile devices
>>
>> The more I look at Sakai, the more it appears to me that out of
>> the box it meets more of these requirements than Moodle does, and
>> it seems to me to be better built and more sensible.
>>
>> -- BUT --
>>
>> I have been in the IT industry for 15 years as a developer,
>> project manager and executive focusing on Open Source solutions
>> and Sakai is making me feel like a real dum dum. I have 2.6.2
>> demo running and am using Packt's "Sakai Courseware Management"
>> as a guide.
>>
>> Something as simple as following the steps in "My First Project
>> Site" are leaving me wondering if Sakai is well documented enough
>> for the average non-University IT department user to deploy and
>> manage. I cannot seem to find a "new" link when logged in as a
>> non-admin user and as an admin, I cannot find where to grant
>> permission to the non-admin user to create a project site.
>>
>> Also, I cannot seem to easily find details relating to what
>> hardware requirements I should expect for a low-use deployment.
>> Pointers?
>>
>> Warwick
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> production mailing list
>> production at collab.sakaiproject.org <mailto:production at collab.sakaiproject.org>
>> http://collab.sakaiproject.org/mailman/listinfo/production
>>
>> TO UNSUBSCRIBE: send email toproduction-unsubscribe at collab.sakaiproject.org <mailto:production-unsubscribe at collab.sakaiproject.org> with a subject of "unsubscribe"
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://collab.sakaiproject.org/pipermail/production/attachments/20100223/ef08203b/attachment.html
More information about the production
mailing list