17 October 2019, 0:07

Dear Support Forum,

I have a few questions about deploying Mahara in the cloud:

1. What are the best options for installing Mahara in the cloud? 
2. How do I install Mahara in the cloud?
3. Has anyone done it via Bitnami?
4. If Mahara is installed in cloud and customised, can the whole system be operated from there and be accessed on the web? 
5. As manager, can I register users and can they access it on web?

Kind regards

Neal Lawrence

20 October 2019, 14:29

Hi Neal,

The cloud is just another server in many cases and thus you can install Mahara in the cloud. There are some added advantages of using Mahara in the cloud as you can set it up in containers and use object storage (right now through a plugin available for AWS and Microsoft Azure) that can keep costs down esp. for larger sites.

You still need a web server and a database server and all the other things that you normally have set up when you are not hosted in a cloud such as test site(s), monitoring and backups in particular.

As for accessing Mahara in the cloud, your learners would do that via a URL to the Mahara site itself and use the same methods as if Mahara were on non-cloud servers. It doesn't matter to a learner whether the site is hosted in the cloud or not. They would not get access to the cloud server account.

Cheers

Kristina

27 November 2019, 3:08

Thanks Kristina,

If I download Mahara onto my PC and do some customisations and configurations, can I save what I have done and transfer it all to a multi-user, server or cloud location to develop further?

Regards

Neal

27 November 2019, 20:01

Hi Neal,

If you made code customisations, you can deploy that code to a cloud server. if you meant you made customisations through the Mahara front-end that ended up in the database then you can take the database and the associated sitedata folder and put them on your server instead of starting from scratch there.

Cheers

Kristina

28 November 2019, 1:26

Hello Kristina,

Thank you for your response.

Just to clarify, I do not mean code changes. I mean't if I am doing customisations and configurations to Mahara admin, downloaded onto my Windows PC. With no code changes, can I transfer these customisations and configurations to a server or cloud location without losing anything? Then, in one of these locations, it would be developed further possibly with new coding.

Regards

Neal

29 November 2019, 11:25

Hi Neal,

You can take the database you created and put that into another Mahara instance, no matter whether it's on your computer or in the cloud. Configuration changes you make through the site administration are stored in the database.

What you can't do is just take those configuration changes along but not any of the content. You'd have to delete people and any content that remains so just get those settings.

Cheers

Kristina