Open edX Light/Express (minimalist version of Open edX)

[ghassanmas]

Abstract

The What

A simple easy guide on how to try Open edX with fewist minilist requirements and resources possible.

The why

• As a course author who is just curious to try Open edX, but I don't the complexity entrace barrier to stop me from that.
• As someone with a low budget, I want to try Open edX but I can't cover the buget needed for the recommended set up (8GB RAM, t2.large EC2 instance) cost around ~75 USD.
• Marketing wise: this is expected to increase the usage of the platform.

The How

• The bit that needs research, discovery, and feedback from community memebers. An example can be to run the platform withouth using Elasticsearch (it consumes 2GB of RAM by default with tutor)

Context & Background

Not everyone wants to use Open edX at scale. I am note sure if Open edX should be only though of as MOOC and if it has that title, show we not give attention for cases where people are trying Open edX with e.g less than 10 courses?.

Answering the above question would in my opinon shed some light, on how important this ticket is.

Scope & Approach

This target meanly the following persona:

• Course author, who are on low budget.
• Course author (with some Sys Admin skills) who wants to try Open edX are not gonig to invesnt more than X period of time for doing so.

Value & Impact

See the the why above

Milestones and/or Epics

n/a

Named Release

n/a

Timeline

n/a

Proposed By

Zaat.dev

Additional Info

No response

[github-actions]

Thanks for your submission, @openedx/open-edx-project-managers will review shortly.

[ghassanmas]

Recenlty I was able to deploy an Open edX instance on premsis (i.e. without relying on any cloud provider).

It costed me 599USD+Tax to buy a mac-mini (this set-up cost is equals to just running instance for 10 months). However no longer you need to keep paying ongoing bills for cloud providers.

The Drawback

This doesn't really resolve it for production mode, but with more sophisticated scirppting/intergation with cloud provider it open an path for free Open edX usage with trade off of reliability

How to overcome the Drawback

1. Set a cloud provider instannce that is turned off which would be truned on if the the on premise is unreacable

2. This would require constsnt back up between the on on premise and on stand-by cloud instance.

I (Ghasan) in the meantime is expected to work on a blog post on how to/tutorial deploy Open edX instance using a mac-mini. However for sophisticated scripting/set up to ensure better reliability, this featuer isn't on my radar as it would require heavy time investing, but happy to work if an organization is intresetd in funding it, or if at somepoint I got a client who is in for that.

Other benefit

• This way of deoplyment can be useful for communites around the world who lacks stable internet connection, in theory you shall be able to use Open edX on local area network without necessary having access to internet connection.
• Use it just as DevEnv (The drawback no longer releavnt) It was discussed 24-04-2023 devExp call

[ghassanmas]

Setting up

Reagding the setup, (how to connect your machine to the outside world): I think I have demosnrated that before in DevExp call, put it simply there two ways to connect on presism/house machine to the outsdie world:

1. The classis way of which you connect your machine to the network while ensuring the following:
   1. Your ISP allows incomfing traffic
   2. IP address is dynamic, create corn-job that auto aupdate it
   3. Need to configure router, to allow NAT/ or DMT.
2. Bypass all configuration hell above, by running a tunnel service, like cloudflared or ngork
   1. I have chosen to use cloudflared because it allows to use tunnels for free, just the requirment is have them as your NS or your domain

So I have chosen cloudflared, and have currenlty a POOC of tutor-plugin, just need to reafctor. the point of the plugin is that once installed and init, it will do all the necessary settings, loggin in, creating tunnel, create route CNAME. All would be done through the classis tutor local init.

Hopefully I would able to deploy the plugin soon by this week.

[ghassanmas]

[Update] Plugin has been publised of which it's 1.1 use case matches the purpose of this issue