Moodle on Google Cloud: Installation and Configuration

Introduction

This learning topic will guide you through the process of setting up and configuring a Moodle Learning Management System (LMS) on a Google Cloud Platform (GCP) virtual machine. Moodle is a powerful open-source platform used by educators and trainers worldwide to create and deliver online courses. By deploying Moodle on GCP, you'll gain practical experience with cloud infrastructure, ensuring a robust, scalable, and secure environment for your educational content.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this topic, you will be able to:

1. Provision and prepare a virtual machine on Google Cloud for a web application.
2. Install and configure the essential software stack (Apache, MySQL, PHP) required to run Moodle.
3. Securely configure a database for use with the Moodle application.
4. Download and manage Moodle repositories and files.
5. Set up and configure Moodle's required data directories and permissions.

Learning Activities

The following hands-on activities will walk you through the entire installation process:

1. Installing the OS and its dependencies.
2. Installing the Moodle v5 dependencies (Apache 2, mysql and PHP).
3. Editing the PHP variables to work with Moodle.
4. Preliminary database security configurations.
5. Downloading the Moodle repositories to the local machine.
6. Checking the available versions of Moodle.
7. Downloading the required version of Moodle.
8. Create the Moodledata folder and give the webservice permission to access it and change permissions for the folder to be writable.