[FYI] Moodle Server Migration & Upgrade

To The Campus Community:
CTS has worked diligently this summer to upgrade and improve a number of the mission-critical technologies utilized by faculty, staff, and students. I am pleased to inform you that we will be moving Moodle to an off-campus hosting provider, as well upgrading to the latest version of the platform. An extended maintenance window will be required to complete the project. During this window, Moodle will be unavailable while final course data is migrated from our on-campus servers to the new hosting provider.
Please be advised that we are tentatively planning for Moodle to be unavailable beginning Friday, August 19th at 8:00 P. M. until approximately Saturday, August 20th at 8:00 A. M. to complete the migration. Please plan accordingly. Any changes to our current plan will be announced by Thursday evening, and a confirmation email will be sent to the campus on Friday.
What does this migration mean for you?

  • You can continue to prepare your Fall 2016 courses right up until 8:00 P. M. on Friday, August 19th. At that time, a copy of all your data will be moved to the upgraded Moodle site at our hosting provider.
  • Beginning Saturday, August 20th, you can continue to prepare courses at the new Moodle site. All your data from our current Moodle site will be available to you in the new one.
  • Past semester course data will also be migrated to the new system.
  • Course shell request processes will remain the same for our new site.
  • Procedures for seeking help remain the same. Please contact moodlesupport@potsdam.edufor assistance with Moodle specific issues. Please contact helpdesk@potsdam.edu for assistance with username and passwords.

Why are we migrating Moodle now?

  • We have very few, small windows where such a migration can take place without affecting live courses. While there is never a perfect time for such an outage, this window, between summer session final grade submission and the beginning of the fall semester, is the most suitable for a migration of this size.
  • The new Moodle site will be more stable and reliable, utilizing the Amazon Web Services cloud for hosting. We wanted to have this stability in place before this coming academic year.