Guidance for Deploying Moodle Learning Management System on AWS

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This Guidance demonstrates how you to operate Moodle, a learning management system (LMS), on AWS to help you adapt to demand. It showcases Moodle as a robust, secure, and integrated LMS designed to create personalized learning environments and cater to the evolving needs of students, educators, and administrators. This Guidance shows how to leverage Moodle to deliver remote and personalized learning experiences at scale, connecting all stakeholders with learning content, resources, assignments, and progress indicators.

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Architecture Diagram

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Guidance Architecture Diagram for Deploying Moodle Learning Management System on AWS

Step 10
AWS CodeCommit provides private Git repositories to host Moodle’s PHP codebase and continuous integration, continuous delivery (CI/CD) configuration files. AWS CodeBuild compiles source code, runs tests, and produces software packages ready to deploy onto the Moodle app server. AWS CodeDeploy manages the complexity of updating applications. It can deploy into Moodle with zero downtime using blue-green deployment methodologies. AWS CodePipeline automates the build, test, and deploy phases for code changes.

Step 1
Amazon Route 53 offers a scalable cloud DNS web service. It directs students to the closest Amazon CloudFront location to access the Moodle web application content while reducing latency.

Step 6
The Moodle app server is deployed horizontally using auto scaling groups with multiple Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances across multiple Availability Zones (AZs), which are deployed in a separate private subnet for additional security. An AWS Systems Manager Agent (SSM Agent) can be configured on the instances to provide SSH access without exposing an SSH port.

Step 10
AWS CodeCommit provides private Git repositories to host Moodle’s PHP codebase and continuous integration, continuous delivery (CI/CD) configuration files. AWS CodeBuild compiles source code, runs tests, and produces software packages ready to deploy onto the Moodle app server. AWS CodeDeploy manages the complexity of updating applications. It can deploy into Moodle with zero downtime using blue-green deployment methodologies. AWS CodePipeline automates the build, test, and deploy phases for code changes.

Step 6
The Moodle app server is deployed horizontally using auto scaling groups with multiple Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances across multiple Availability Zones (AZs), which are deployed in a separate private subnet for additional security. An AWS Systems Manager Agent (SSM Agent) can be configured on the instances to provide SSH access without exposing an SSH port.

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Well-Architected Pillars

The AWS Well-Architected Framework helps you understand the pros and cons of the decisions you make when building systems in the cloud. The six pillars of the Framework allow you to learn architectural best practices for designing and operating reliable, secure, efficient, cost-effective, and sustainable systems. Using the AWS Well-Architected Tool, available at no charge in the AWS Management Console, you can review your workloads against these best practices by answering a set of questions for each pillar.

The architecture diagram above is an example of a Solution created with Well-Architected best practices in mind. To be fully Well-Architected, you should follow as many Well-Architected best practices as possible.

Operational Excellence

Define your Moodle environment in code using AWS CloudFormation to enable consistent and repeatable provisioning and updates. Automate the deployment process with AWS CodePipeline, CodeBuild, and CodeDeploy to ensure changes are deployed efficiently and reliably, reducing the potential for human error. These services help you implement best practices around change management, deployment, and monitoring, improving the reliability, availability, and maintainability of your Moodle environment.

Read the Operational Excellence whitepaper
Security

CloudFront provides traffic encryption and access controls and integrates with AWS Shield Standard to defend against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks at no additional charge. Use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) to scope down permissions to the minimum required for each service, limiting unauthorized access to resources. Together, these services help you improve the overall security posture of your Moodle environment.

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Reliability

Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) provides a secure, isolated network environment for the Moodle deployment. Auto Scaling automatically adjusts the number of EC2 instances based on load, ensuring your application can handle changing demand. ALB provides high availability by distributing traffic across multiple AZs and instances. Aurora, a highly available and reliable database service, and Amazon EFS, a scalable and durable file system, help create a fault-tolerant Moodle environment.

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Performance Efficiency

Aurora, a highly scalable and performant relational database service, handles the database workloads of your Moodle deployment. ElastiCache provides in-memory data stores for caching application data and user sessions, significantly improving response times. CloudFront reduces latency by delivering Moodle web content form edge locations closer to users.

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Cost Optimization

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling allows you to automatically adjust the number of EC2 instances based on actual usage, so that you only pay for the resources you need. Using managed services, such as ElastiCache, reduces the overhead of managing these components yourself. Additionally, CloudFront caches content at edge locations, minimizing data transfer costs from the origin servers. This helps ensure your Moodle environment is cost-effective by providing the right level of resources at the right time, without over-provisioning or waste.

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Sustainability

You can automatically adjust the number of EC2 instances based on actual usage with Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling, avoiding overprovisioning and minimizing waste. Managed services such as Amazon Aurora and Amazon EFS scale seamlessly, reducing the need to over-provision storage capacity. This auto-scaling and managed services approach helps reduce the overall energy consumption and environmental impact of your Moodle environment.

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Disclaimer

The sample code; software libraries; command line tools; proofs of concept; templates; or other related technology (including any of the foregoing that are provided by our personnel) is provided to you as AWS Content under the AWS Customer Agreement, or the relevant written agreement between you and AWS (whichever applies). You should not use this AWS Content in your production accounts, or on production or other critical data. You are responsible for testing, securing, and optimizing the AWS Content, such as sample code, as appropriate for production grade use based on your specific quality control practices and standards. Deploying AWS Content may incur AWS charges for creating or using AWS chargeable resources, such as running Amazon EC2 instances or using Amazon S3 storage.

References to third-party services or organizations in this Guidance do not imply an endorsement, sponsorship, or affiliation between Amazon or AWS and the third party. Guidance from AWS is a technical starting point, and you can customize your integration with third-party services when you deploy the architecture.