Overview
NEW: Run Quince today! The latest release of Open edX is out, and with Tutor it's easier than ever to try it out and to upgrade from previous versions.
Tutor is an Open edX distribution designed for simplicity and ease of maintenance: we took the original, unmodified Open edX code and packaged it in a way that makes it extremely easy to install, customise and upgrade. With Tutor, all Open edX components are created in Docker containers: that means that Open edX becomes cleanly separated from the rest of the server. With Tutor, Open edX uses minimal server resource, is simple to understand and has low maintenance costs.
Tutor is open source: you can study the code and run it on your own servers, for instance for local development: https://github.com/overhangio/tutor
After launching this image, you will have access to a web user interface on port 3737. Sign in with user "tutor" and password equal to the instance ID ("i-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"). The password can be changed by running:
webui configure
Then, you can configure and launch your Open edX platform with:
local launch
In the future, if you would like to run your own server and move your platform, you will just have to move the "/home/tutor/.local/share/tutor" folder to your new server.
For more advanced features, please checkout the Tutor documentation: https://docs.tutor.edly.io
Highlights
- Open source: you are free to read, modify and distribute the Tutor code
- Simplicity: the CLI, accessible from a shell or a web user interface, is concise and clearly documented
- Future-proof: don't be afraid to upgrade your Open edX platform whenever a new release comes out
Details
Typical total price
$0.145/hour
Pricing
Free trial
Instance type | Product cost/hour | EC2 cost/hour | Total/hour |
|---|---|---|---|
t2.medium | $0.07 | $0.046 | $0.116 |
t2.large | $0.07 | $0.093 | $0.163 |
t2.xlarge | $0.07 | $0.186 | $0.256 |
t2.2xlarge | $0.07 | $0.371 | $0.441 |
t3.nano | $0.07 | $0.005 | $0.075 |
t3.micro AWS Free Tier | $0.07 | $0.01 | $0.08 |
t3.small | $0.07 | $0.021 | $0.091 |
t3.medium | $0.07 | $0.042 | $0.112 |
t3.large | $0.07 | $0.083 | $0.153 |
t3.xlarge | $0.07 | $0.166 | $0.236 |
Additional AWS infrastructure costs
Type | Cost |
|---|---|
EBS General Purpose SSD (gp2) volumes | $0.10/per GB/month of provisioned storage |
Vendor refund policy
No refunds
Legal
Vendor terms and conditions
Content disclaimer
Delivery details
64-bit (x86) Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
An AMI is a virtual image that provides the information required to launch an instance. Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) instances are virtual servers on which you can run your applications and workloads, offering varying combinations of CPU, memory, storage, and networking resources. You can launch as many instances from as many different AMIs as you need.
Version release notes
Additional details
Usage instructions
Access the web user interface at http://yourinstanceaddress:3737 . Sign in with user "tutor" and password equal to the instance ID ("i-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"). The password can be changed by running:
webui configure
All the "tutor" commands described in the official documentation (http://docs.tutor.edly.io/ ) can be run inside this web user interface. For example, configure and launch an Open edX instance from scratch with:
local launch
You will need to setup DNS entries that point to your EC2 instance: for instance, if you own the "myopenedx.com" domain name, both "myopenedx.com" and "*.myopenedx.com" should point to the newly-created instance. You can then set "myopenedx.com" and "studio.myopenedx.com" as the LMS and CMS domain names. In particular, this is required for HTTPS certificate generation.
When the "local launch" command completes, after about 10 minutes, a full Open edX platform will be available at the url you configured. You will probably want to create a user with the right privileges to administer your Open edX platform. To do so, run:
local do createuser --staff --superuser yourusername your@email.com
Making changes to the configuration is very easy: just run "local launch" again. Subsequent runs will be much faster.
To connect to your EC2 instance, you should SSH with user "ubuntu". Then, switch to the "tutor" user:
ssh ubuntu@yourinstanceaddress
sudo su tutor
You are then able to run all "tutor" commands, as explained in the official Tutor documentation.
Resources
Vendor resources
Support
Vendor support
Community support is available on the official Open edX community forums: https://discuss.openedx.org .
Do you need professional assistance setting up or managing your Open edX platform? Edly provides online support as part of its Open edX installation service:
AWS infrastructure support
AWS Support is a one-on-one, fast-response support channel that is staffed 24x7x365 with experienced and technical support engineers. The service helps customers of all sizes and technical abilities to successfully utilize the products and features provided by Amazon Web Services.
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Customer reviews
It didn't work
I was really looking forward to this one. I spent the entire day trying to install this. Then I found another video teaching how to setup openedx from scratch.
The instructions in the video of are incomplete and simply do not work on many systems. Sorry I wouldn't give such review if my time wasn't wasted.
Not working at all
I subscribed to a 30-day trial a couple of days ago, but it didn't work at all. The instructions were horrible. Then, Tutor charged me $508 today for a service that hasn't worked for a second, even though it's still within the 30-day trial period. The worst part is that there's no way to get support from Tutor.
I plan to dispute the charge with my bank and escalate the issue to AWS to request a full refund.
Works out of the box - Unfair criticism
Please ignore the unfair ratings and criticism.
This works out of the box very well.
Follow the instructions in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtXP52qGphA&ab_channel=OverhangIO
It's for an older version of openedx but the instructions are still valid.
The install was slow but painless
We're getting started with this (v13.1.0), and while the AMI took a long time for us to get it into a usable state (also glad I understand DNS well), it worked fine in automating away all the hassle of doing the install ourselves. I appreciate the effort that went into this.
Latest version (13.0.2) fails to local quickstart
This seems to be brand new, so I feel bad giving a first review about a failed launch. But then again, you would think the developer would test it. The point of this image is to get you up and started with an open edX instance on AWS quickly. I've done this before, a long time ago with an older version, and the scripts are always a bit of a pain. So this sounded like a great idea.
There is even a video that you can follow step by step (though it appears to use an older version). Aside from configuring the security group, you should basically be able to choose a supported instance type and default settings. You then access the web-based configurator and type "local quickstart". The problem is it takes a long time and then fails. There is nothing you can do, since the whole thing is intended to be self-contained. I tried twice from scratch. Will try the older version, but I hope it's not another waste of time.