Hosting Open Edx on Amazon EC2 or other clouds

[Sidd Maini]

Hello all,

I have a question about running Open Edx on the EC2 cloud using the Amazon EC2 AMI's provided by Edx at https://github.com/edx/configuration/wiki/Single-AWS-server-installation-using-Amazon-Machine-Image and https://bitnami.com/stack/edx/cloud/amazon

The Edx configuration contains the Kifli release, which I am unable to find to which I'd assume that people are using the Bitnami EC2 AMI's.

1. Is it secure, reliable, and stable to run Open Edx on EC2? I would like to know people's experience running it.
2. Does EC2 automatically take care of scalability?
3. How many servers would I need to host two small courses? I think Feanil Patel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITMwNto82eE) mentioned a small scale local deployment of two servers
4. Any estimate of costs using Amazon EC2?
5. Anybody used Google or Azure cloud for hosting?

Thank You,

Sidd

[Nick Wells]

I deployed the bitnami stack on a free tier micro T2 instance of EC2 within 10 mins everything was up and running. Great for testing and developing but I'm not sure how fit for purpose the free tier servers would be for a production OpenEdx instance, it really depends on your number of anticipated users.

Sorry I can't answer your specific questions but hope my feedbacck helps, its worth giving it a try on the free tier server.

[Siddharth Maini]

Nick, They suggest using a minimum of a medium instance. I do not think that free tier is good for production because there are limits to it. 

Bitnami stack does not include xqwatcher, xqueue services for grading purposes. However, it is great for testing and development purposes but I think a clean install from the edx repo is probably the best option.

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[Abhi]

Sidd, I am using a Bitnami installation instance on Google Compute Engine. Could you please specify the limits that you think will be faced with this installation? If there are issues with scalability at what level can one expect to hit those limits. Also when those limitations are hit would there be a way to get around them on Compute Engine, like by increasing the power of the VM etc.

[Chris Zoellick]

We're using Azure here successfully. 

We have a single front-end server on a 'Standard D2 (2 Cores, 7 GB memory)' VM. The lower tier VM we started with didn't have enough RAM to meet the needs of various components of the full stack and we experienced memory-related failures as we got things going. I definitely recommend following the minimum memory recommendation guidance :).

I've seen at least one advanced module that is set up for S3 storage from AWS, but doesn't appear to have an Azure storage equivalent. 

If it weren't for credit we get towards Azure from our MSDN subscription, I would have gone with AWS.

Chris

[Abhi]

Thank you Chris, but would you have any specific reasons for choosing AWS over Google Compute Engine? AWS seems to be more popular, but just wondering if Google's infrastructure that holds all of Google Data may be a better cloud service. Also I have been given to understand that Google Compute Engine may be cheaper. Also I do not understand what is meant by Sidd Maini's comment when he says that the Bitnami stack "does not include xqwatcher, xqueue services for grading purposes". I am using the Bitnami stack on Google Compute Engine.

[Siddharth Maini]

Abhi, I haven' used Google Compute Engine. I am using an xLarge instance for hosting an instance that is being accessed by ~130 students. It really depends upon your requirements. Are you planning to host multiple courses? How many students are you targeting? 

Hence, It is difficult to answer the question on limits. Ideal way I have heard Open Edx is being run is by spreading resource intensive services to multiple instances. Watch this view on architecture being used by Edx itself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITMwNto82eE

I think ideally I would want to host mongodb on a separate instance. 

Hope this helps!

Sidd

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[Abhi]

Thank you Sidd, I really don't know how to host mangodb on separate instances. Guess I will figure that out once we need to move to that stage. Right now my requirement would probably not be more than 130 students accessing courses simultaneously.

[Chris Zoellick]

Honestly in general I would just prefer to use AWS as that appears to be the target environment that the core development team uses. I'm sure Google Cloud would work very well, but I often wonder what if anything I'm missing out from by not using AWS when I see various AWS references in configuration scripts, etc. To be fair though, it's more of a preference driven by ignorance of the inner workings of the configuration stack and a reluctance to prioritize that on my list of things to learn about EdX.

Chris

[Siddharth Maini]

Agreed with Chris. Open Edx was primarily built to be used on AWS.

Sidd

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[Abhi]

Thank you both Chris and Sidd for these valuable inputs.

[Tha]

Hi Chris, just wondering if you're still using Open EDX on Azure and if it's still working OK for you? Or did you switch to AWS in the mean time?

Op dinsdag 8 december 2015 21:33:16 UTC+1 schreef Chris Zoellick: