BitNami Moodle for VMware

Moodle_1.3_sample_course_screengrab

Download PDF Manual

What is the BitNami Application Library for VMware

The BitNami Application Library for VMware is a collection of popular open source applications that are prepackaged as application blueprints and ready to use with VMware vFabric™ Application Director. The library includes wikis, content and document management systems, portals, development tools, customer relationship management (CRM) systems and many other types of applications. You can learn more about them at http://bitnami.com/vmware

BitNami’s library for VMware consists of BitNami’s application components within reusable blueprints using industry’s leading Cloud-enabled application provisioning solution, VMware vFabric™ Application Director. The product takes a model-driven open approach to drastically simplify and automate application deployment topologies of portable multi-tier applications in private, public and hybrid clouds. These application topologies are called application blueprints. With the joint integration of BitNami application packages with VMware vFabric™ Application Director, users can rapidly deploy and customize applications across clouds per their enterprise IT policies.

The BitNami Application Library hooks up to existing services like Apache and MySQL, making it easy to deploy and manage your favorite applications.

Supported Platforms

The BitNami Application Library currently supports the following OS platforms:

  • CentOS 5.6: Both local and remote MySQL deployments

Support for RHEL and Ubuntu is planned.

Introduction to Moodle

Moodle is a Course Management System that is designed using sound pedagogical principles to help educators create effective online learning communities. It can scale from one computer to a 50,000-student university and is used in 175 countries around the world.

You can learn more about Moodle at (http://moodle.org/)

The following sections will explain how to launch and manage Moodle with VMware vFabric™ Application Director.

Identifying BitNami Services

Go to "Administration" in the Catalog section. Then in "Tags" create a new tag for BitNami. This will make easier to identify the BitNami services later when creating new Blueprints.

  • Name: BitNami

  • Description: Deployment of web applications

BitNami Tag
Figure 1: BitNami Tag

Creating a BitNami Moodle Service

Use an Application Director wizard to create a new service.

  • Service details:

Moodle Service Details
Figure 2: Moodle Service Details

  • Service properties:

Moodle Service Properties
Figure 3: Moodle Service Properties
Moodle Service Scripts
Figure 4: Moodle Service Scripts

Building Blueprints using the BitNami Moodle Service

Once you have created the BitNami Moodle service in your catalog, you can use it as a building block when you create your own Blueprints. To use BitNami Moodle in your own BluePrints, complete the following steps:

  • Add an OS Template supported by the service.

  • Add the Apache 2.2.0 Web Server service.

  • Add the MySQL 5.0.0 Database server service.

  • Add the BitNami Moodle service. Set the base_password property for the BitNami Moodle service to match the MySQL service password - self:MySQL:db_root_password. For remote database installations you can also set the mysql_hostname and the mysql_port properties.

Moodle Blueprint
Figure 5: Moodle Blueprint

Launching BitNami Moodle as a Blueprint

The BitNami Moodle Blueprint provides a server specification that includes:

  • Apache.

  • PHP.

  • MySQL.

  • A ready to run version of Moodle.

Blueprints make it easy to launch servers that share a well-defined, repeatable configuration. To launch a server based on a Blueprint, go to the Applications section in the vFabric UI and select one of the BitNami Moodle Blueprints available in the system.

You need to specify a value for the moodle_password property for the BitNami Moodle service. This is the password that will be used to log into the application.

Optionally, you can specify the following parameters:

  • moodle_user: The username that will be used to log in into the application. The default value is user.

  • moodle_user_name: Full name for the Moodle administrator user. The default value is User Name.

  • moodle_mail: Moodle administrator email address. The default value is mail@example.com.

Accessing your Moodle application

Once you have launched BitNami Moodle, you can view the details for the running machines in your deployment, including the IP of the server where Moodle is running. Pointing your browser to http://<ip>/moodle will take you to the main screen of your application. You will be presented with a login screen:

Login Screen
Figure 6: Login Screen

You can now enter the username and password provided at launch time to access the application.

Filesystem Layout

The installation of all BitNami applications is standardized. This section provides an overview of where each component is located in the event that you need to log in to your server, which you can do using the VMware console.

The standard location for the BitNami Library Application files is under /opt/bitnami. The following top-level folders are available:

  • mysql/: Contains configuration files related to MySQL. No MySQL binaries or libraries are bundled with BitNami for VMware deployments. Instead, the apps deployed integrate with the existing MySQL server provided by the distribution (either local or remote) and that has been configured using the VMware vFabric™ Application Director service template.

  • apache2/: Contains configuration files related to Apache. No Apache binaries or libraries are bundled with BitNami for VMware deployments. Instead, the apps deployed integrate with the existing Apache server provided by the distribution and that has been configured using the VMware vFabric™ Application Director service template.

  • scripts/: Control scripts internal to BitNami.

  • apps/: The directory containing the BitNami applications that have been installed.

And, inside apps/moodle folder:

  • You will find the application files for BitNami Moodle under apps/moodle/htdocs/.

  • Apache configuration files for BitNami Moodle, under apps/moodle/conf/ as well as optional configuration scripts under scripts/.

At the top level of the installation you will find the following additional files:

  • properties.ini: This file is readable only for the user that the installation was performed as. It includes information related to installation paths and configuration settings for the installed applications and associated services.

  • ctlscript.sh: Management script that allows you to start / stop different services. It provides a consistent interface across operating systems and services. You can find more information by typing /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh restart

The reason that all configuration and application files are located inside /opt/bitnami is to remain consistent with other BitNami application packages such as native installers and VMs that can be downloaded from (http://bitnami.com). Maintaining a common filesystem layout across operating systems and delivery mechanisms helps in many scenarios, such as moving from local laptop development environment to a vCloud production environment.

Additional resources

You can find additional information about BitNami Applications for VMware at http://bitnami.com/vmware

The BitNami VMware library is part of the BitNami platform. If you are an enterprise customer or service provider and are interested in running BitNami applications on your infrastructure, please contact us.