Working with the Moodle Database: The Basics

3. Copyright 2020 Severalnines AB Agenda ● What is the Moodle Database? ● Moodle Database Configuration ● What to Monitor in the Moodle Database? ● Moodle Database Schema ● Database Activity in Moodle ● Managing the Moodle Database with ClusterControl 3

4. Copyright 2020 Severalnines AB 4 ● Moodle database stores ○ all of the information related to Moodle. ● Moodle supports MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, MS SQL and Oracle databases. ● The most frequently used database for Moodle is MySQL. What is the Moodle Database?

6. Copyright 2020 Severalnines AB 6 ● Moodle has thousands of plugins available - the plugin list includes 1,769 plugins. ○ The plugin list includes gamification plugins, questionnaire plugins, certificate plugins etc. ○ Each plugin comes with its own schema. Moodle Plug-ins

8. Copyright 2020 Severalnines AB 8 ● Moodle Database Configuration File @ /var/www/html/moodle/config.php: $CFG->dbtype = 'mariadb'; // 'pgsql', 'mariadb', 'mysqli', 'sqlsrv' or 'oci' $CFG->dblibrary = 'native'; // 'native' only at the moment $CFG->dbhost = '10.10.10.134'; // eg 'localhost' or 'db.isp.com' or IP $CFG->dbname = 'moodle'; // database name, eg moodle $CFG->dbuser = 'moodleuser'; // your database username $CFG->dbpass = 'moodlepass'; // your database password $CFG->prefix = 'mdl_'; // prefix to use for all table names $CFG->dboptions = array( 'dbpersist' => false, // ‘false’ - most stable setting, ‘true’ sometimes improves performance 'dbsocket' => false, // Should connection via UNIX socket be used? 'dbport' => '', // The TCP port. Leave empty for the default port 'dbhandlesoptions' => false, // pgbouncer doesn’t support advanced options on connection 'dbcollation' => 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci' // database collation, best to leave at default ); Moodle Database Configuration

10. Copyright 2020 Severalnines AB 10 What to Monitor in Moodle? What to Do? How to Do It? Take two things into account Take into account the OS and the database. Monitor the metrics in the context of your system Look for alterations in the behavioral patterns: excessive CPU usage might be a problem, high RAM usage probably means that you need to check your DB configuration, high load average could be generated by excessive CPU, RAM or disk usage. Monitor your database Monitor your queries, the amount of active sessions, database locks etc.

11. Copyright 2020 Severalnines AB 11 What to Monitor in Moodle? What to Monitor? How to Do It? Queries Know what data they access, are they using indexes or partitions, what are their patterns. Use EXPLAIN. Active sessions If the number is high, increment the maximum value or check if something is wrong. Database locks If you have a query waiting for another query, check if it should be running in the first place. Backups Make sure they are up to date and can be restored.

13. Copyright 2020 Severalnines AB 13 Moodle Database Schema What do You Need to Do to Begin Working with Moodle? How to Do It? Create a database that stores the Moodle tables in MySQL, change the default character set and collation to UTF-8, also grant privileges. Run the following queries: CREATE DATABASE moodle DEFAULT CHARACTER SET UTF8; GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON moodle.* TO ‘moodleuser’@’localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘password’; FLUSH PRIVILEGES; Keep in mind the effects of the privileges. Keep in mind that GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES allows a MySQL user full access to a designated database.

14. Copyright 2020 Severalnines AB 14 Moodle Database Schema Category of Database Schemas About Configuration tables Consists of the following tables: config, config_log, config_plugins Users and their profile tables Consists of the following tables: user, user_enrolments, user_info_category, user_info_data, user_info_field, user_lastaccess, user_preferences, user_private_key

15. Copyright 2020 Severalnines AB 15 ● Moodle’s database activity allows you to build, display and search entries (files, images, links to websites, text...) on a topic of your choice. ● Activities can be: ○ Moderated ○ Commented ○ Rated ○ Displayed as a list or individually Database Activity in Moodle

16. Copyright 2020 Severalnines AB 16 ● To add a database activity, turn on the editing, then select database from the activity chooser. Database activities can also have names and descriptions: Database Activity in Moodle Log in as a teacher, then turn on editing.

17. Copyright 2020 Severalnines AB 17 ● Database activities work through views ○ student views and teacher views ● In a student view, students can click on the Database icon in the course to access it and add entries. ● In a teacher view, teachers can see the set up tabs and can edit, delete, approve and unapprove entries as required. Database Activity in Moodle – How Does it Work?

19. Copyright 2020 Severalnines AB 19 ● ClusterControl can help you with load balancing, adding or removing slave nodes, automatic failover and recovery, backups and more: ○ Monitor your database servers in real-time ○ Create alerts which inform of events in your database ○ Scale-out your database ■ multi-master ■ primary with multiple secondaries Monitoring the Moodle Database with ClusterControl

20. Copyright 2020 Severalnines AB 20 ● Provides a unified view of all DB instances (even across multiple datacenters) letting you see the big picture or individual nodes. ● Backup management ○ Centralizes backups to protect, secure and recover your data ○ Backup verification feature to ensure backups are restorable ○ Support for different native backup methods ■ XtraBackup, MariaBackup, pg_basebackup, pgbackrest, among others... Monitoring the Moodle Database with ClusterControl

21. Copyright 2020 Severalnines AB 21 Monitoring the Moodle Database with ClusterControl What can ClusterControl help with? How? Security Manage database users and roles (ClusterControl -> Your Cluster -> Manage -> Schema and Users (or User Management for PostgreSQL). Logs See the ClusterControl log section. Integration with your custom automation scripts s9s CLI available

22. Copyright 2020 Severalnines AB 22 Hardware specs (CPU clock, cores, disk subsystem, RAM, swap, NIC, etc) Hardware specs (CPU clock, cores, disk subsystem, RAM, swap, NIC, etc) Monitoring the Moodle Database with ClusterControl - Backups mysqldump, Percona XtraBackup, MariaDB Backup, NDB Backup Backups can be uploaded to the cloud and restored

Working with the Moodle Database: The Basics

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