Managing the database behind Moodle is key to improving performance and achieving uptime for your users. In this training video we will talk about the Moodle database including topics like configuration, monitoring, and schema management as well as show you how ClusterControl can help with the management of your eLearning LMS systems.

1. Copyright 2020 Severalnines AB
Lukas Vileikis, Marketing Manager, Severalnines
Presenter
lukasvileikis.com
lukas@severalnines.com
Managing the Moodle Database: Getting
Started
January 27th, 2021

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Agenda
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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
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● 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?

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● 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

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Moodle Database Configuration and
Monitoring
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● 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

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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.

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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.

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Moodle Database Schema
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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.

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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

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● 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

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● 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.

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● 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?

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Moodle Database and ClusterControl
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● 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

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● 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

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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

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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

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Monitoring the Moodle Database with
ClusterControl - Overview

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Monitoring the Moodle Database with
ClusterControl - Query Monitoring

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Adding a New Integration

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Lukas Vileikis, Severalnines
Severalnines.com
lukasvileikis.com
Thank You! ☺
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