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:
- Provision and prepare a virtual machine on Google Cloud for a web application.
- Install and configure the essential software stack (Apache, MySQL, PHP) required to run Moodle.
- Securely configure a database for use with the Moodle application.
- Download and manage Moodle repositories and files.
- 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:
- Installing the OS and its dependencies.
- Installing the Moodle v5 dependencies (Apache 2, mysql and PHP).
- Editing the PHP variables to work with Moodle.
- Preliminary database security configurations.
- Downloading the Moodle repositories to the local machine.
- Checking the available versions of Moodle.
- Downloading the required version of Moodle.
- Create the Moodledata folder and give the webservice permission to access it and change permissions for the folder to be writable.