Understanding the Value of Database Automation in E-Learning

E-learning management systems, such as Moodle, proved to be very valuable during the COVID-19 pandemic. Such systems are developed on pedagogical principles allowing educators and trainers to achieve their training goals. E-learning platforms can greatly benefit from database automation – in this blog post we will try to figure out why.

How Can Database Automation be Beneficial in E-Learning?

In general, database automation means leveraging processes and tools to simplify tasks related to a database. Database automation can allow you to have fewer deployment errors, also higher reliability and speed on implementing changes. Database automation can also save time for DBAs – they might no longer need to check and update custom maintenance scripts, or manually failover or recover a database, and thus have more time for other tasks.

E-learning specifically can benefit from multiple things related to database automation. Here’s a couple of things that database automation can help with:

• Scaling and high availability – scaling e-learning platforms proved to be very valuable during the COVID-19 pandemic. As everyone is learning from home, overloading the e-learning platforms in use is very common and the overload can cause problems for both students and teachers alike.
• Backups – backing up the data in use with e-learning platforms should come as a no-brainer. If your data that is in use with e-learning platforms is corrupt or damaged in any other way, backups can save the day. And hopefully you have verified your backups so you know they are restorable.
• Failover – as far as e-learning is concerned, failover can also be very beneficial. By switching to a redundant or standby server, system, hardware component or network upon the failure of one or more of the components in use, you can minimize downtime and save the time of both teachers and students.

 Scaling and High Availability in E-Learning

As far as e-learning is concerned, scaling and accounting for high availability can be very beneficial. ProxySQL, for example, can provide you with a number of benefits including “intelligent” load balancing of application requests onto multiple databases, splitting reads and writes, providing query workload analytics and so on. ClusterControl has had support for ProxySQL ever since version 1.4.0, it can help you both deploy and manage ProxySQL: you might want to head off to our tutorials section to acquire more information about how everything works.

Backups in E-Learning

We usually don’t see the value of backups until disaster strikes. There are specific built-in solutions for taking backups in Moodle and database backups can be taken using ClusterControl. As far as e-learning is concerned, all of your backups should ideally be automated and tested frequently – this way you won’t need to worry about whether your backups are up to date or not, and should disaster strike, you would also easily be able to restore them: ClusterControl can also help you do that.

Failover in E-Learning

As already mentioned above, failover can help minimize downtime and save time for both students and teachers. The ability to seamlessly and reliably switch to a backup system can save the day incase of any human error or a disaster – ClusterControl can help you automate the process.

Summary

Database automation can help avoid numerous pitfalls related to e-learning. It can help you ensure that your systems remain available no matter what happens, it can help you in regards to backing up your data, database automation can also help achieve automated failover. All of the aforementioned processes can be automated using ClusterControl.