Improving Moodle Performance Using HAProxy and MariaDB Galera Cluster

Abstract

Moodle is a widely used Learning Management System in various educational institutions worldwide. However, frequent reports on internet forums indicate performance degradation when massive simultaneous users access Moodle. One of the most resource-intensive components supporting Moodle is the database, as all user-accessed data is stored in it. This study aims to optimize Moodle’s performance through distributed databases. Distributing the database into multiple database servers allows the database load to be distributed across all the database servers, resulting in an overall improvement in Moodle performance. This study compares the performance of Moodle installed on a single server with that installed on multiple database servers. Various testing parameters are employed to get valid results. Namely, course read, course write, and database performance, utilizing the server performance plugin available in Moodle. This research reveals a performance improvement of 384% in course read, 193% in course write, and 260% in the Moodle database in the multi-server scenario compared to the single-server scenario. This result validates that the database is the most crucial part of Moodle.