Server requirements for Opensim - an email from Will to Nick, Monash IT

OpenSim is alpha (or pre-alpha depending on who you ask) software, so reliability and performance is not particularly easy to achieve. Getting it to perform well means getting better hardware than is generally required for other server applications.

The core of OpenSim is a MySQL database, which can get quite large. This means that the server needs to have plenty of RAM and fast disks in order to keep the queries running quickly. Of course, the larger the database becomes as more objects are created, and textures uploaded, the MySQL server will chew through more and more RAM, so it is important to have an excess from the very start.

OpenSim is also a physics simulator, and runs scripts that perform certain actions inside the world. This is done with the CPU, and in quite a highly threaded fashion. Given the option, it may be wiser to choose a CPU (or CPUs) that have more processing threads over the clock speed.

Having said all of this, the RAM and disks are the most important, as the MySQL database is essentially what drives the server. CPU power is also important to have so that the whole thing doesn't die when physics are being simulated.

I am of the understanding that the server might also be used for other purposes, your budget is about $4000-$5000, and your regular server is the R710. So:

CPU:

It appears that the R710 comes with 2 processors (I'm not too sure), so I would say that 2 Quad Core Xeons would suffice. The clock speed should probably be more than 2.2ghz or so.

Operating System:

I forgot to mention this before, but OpenSim is written in C# (.NET) so it can run on both Windows and Linux. .NET is native to Windows of course, so there is added reliability and stability there. We used to run OpenSim on Linux, and it often had problems. I would advise running Windows.

RAM:

As I said before, RAM is important considering that OpenSim relies heavily on a MySQL database. Not only this, but OpenSim caches most things in memory, so memory is used quite a lot. I would recommend a minimum of 8GB, but the more you have, the more room there is for MySQL.

Hard Drives:

The drives need to be fast, but massive amounts of space is not required. I would recommend using 15K drives, and RAID is obviously preferable to keep redundancy and perhaps more speed. Our OpenSim database is about 1.8gb with about 200,000 rows in total, so disk space will be used quite slowly. Even a 146GB 15K drive would probably be fine for quite some time.

Having said all of this, if you can get better parts, definitely go for it, especially in the CPU and Disks. I wouldn't think any more than 12GB of RAM is required, so any extra money should be spent on getting a faster CPU or faster disks.

If you want some more information on OpenSim, there is extensive information on their wiki at http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Main_Page

Will.

Week 2, Group 2

5 students in this group.

Once again, students noted in the short focus group at the end how much they enjoyed the virtual world activities and that it had helped them learn OH&S.

First pair v adept in OH&S. Lots of conversation to answer questions correctly.

Not though for following pair - took ages to do quiz, quite noteworthy lack of knowledge about asbestos and its effects and handling procedures.

Construction trial, Week 2, Group 1

Very interesting session.

Trialed OH&S exploratory and door quiz exercises with 5 students. (one/two at a time, with others continuing to work on their buildings)

First one solo. Realised he was asking us and other sts about the questions throughout, gaining knowledge. We then decided to continue the trial in pairs, which worked well - sts bouncing off one another to answer the questions and find the unsafe practices.

Gave them same paper test as last week - initial impression is that they have been filled in to a much greater level of detail, will be interesting to see marked results.

Also noted need to develop exercises in tandem with students. Throughout they were pointing out things we had missed in-world (as construction luddites) such as other unsafe practices eg planks of wood lying on ground. This will help us greatly. We will also need to add more unsafe examples in the exploratory exercise, as well as examples that ARE safe.

One interesting thing that came up is the issue of prompts in relation to the exploratory exercise. Our team was prompting students at times to look for more examples ("you got 2 to go" etc). Should we prompt? Our conclusion is:
- yes - if we want DEVELOP knowledge, to facilitate the most amount of knowledge gain
- no - if we want to TEST knowledge (want to replicate real life, where workers need to be alert to unsafe practices)

General impression is that, if familiar with virtual worlds, sts don't need much in the way of guidance to do the tasks except for something at the beginning of the structured door quiz to give them some context

Focus group at end - univerally positive, want to keep doing it, see it as fun and that they've learned more about OH&S

Issue of trees - pranking:putting trees into others' buildings etc. Big 'No Trees' message on whiteboard

Snapshots from the last two sessions at VU Newport

3rd construction group, week 1

Again, immediately engaged by virtual world.

Excited about building avatars, even joke ones.

Totally not listening to Dale when he explains how to do stuff from the front, with projected screen. He needs to go to every student group, show them how to do it. But once he does, they are engrossed.

End of session:

Asked the six students if they played games. All bar one did. Interestingly, the one who didn't was the only one who said the virtual world work was, quote, 'shit' and didn't want to do more next week. The others said they enjoyed it and were keen to do more.

Plan for 2011

After talking to Justin, Mark and Dale, and learning from our 2010 activities, here's a revised plan for delivery for 2011:

Beginning-mid February 2011:

- organise 2 weeks of backfill for Justin and any necessary backfill for Mark if needed - we will pay for this. Justin is teaching as of Jan 30 and Mark at end of Feb.

- Stefan, Craig, Justin and Mark to work together to develop immersive activities (keeping Dale in the loop too - Dale will be busy on other projects at that time)

- Activities developed will depend on availability of web in prim feature within OpenSim. If it's not ready, we will have to adjust activities a little.

- Focus on developing in-world activities *and assessment* for three subjects previously targeted: OH&S, Sustainability and Building Docs and Plans.

- Activities to be immersive, where students do or make stuff ,and where there is a sequence of events with consequences for doing (or not) things right

- Assessment to take the form of in-world question-answer tests, to be collected by PushLMS (basically in-world versions of current paper tests)


- USB Stick functionality to be incorporated into project as a subset of activities in trial form eg some activities could be delivered by USB and undertaken individually by students in their own time or in lab. Possibly also some assessment could take place via USB if results can be fed back into PushLMS. But will see how this pans out.

- Plan of delivery worked out in consultation with Daniel


After Feb 2011:

- follow-up week of tweaking/redevelopment undertaken with the team. May involve more backfill

Today - first day of Construction trial

Hello from Newport campus.

First group of 6 pre-app students is busy building their houses. All v engaged, chose not to take smoko like last time.

Six boys, 16-17 yo. Nobody's a gamer. (Two staff are!) Don't do 3D, just Facebook etc. But all seemed to take to OpenSim - flying, walking, avatar creation straight away.

As far as building goes, ability varies. One guy is a whiz, the guy next to him much slower. Being helped by his neighbour. But by now (10.15 am, about 90 mins after starting) all are building houses on plans - not many questions being asked at all, getting on with it.

Should note that helping Dale today are Craig and James. Going smoothly for this reason - Dale not running around trying to snswer all manner of requests.

Teachers: Daniel wants to embed with all students next year. Justin and Mark (staff) v keen. Mark here too. Will be running new 'TradeApps' pre App program next year. Advantage - will know students, will have been working with them. Also working with Trade Colleges (TTCs), delivering at Keilor Downs (?)

Issues that have come up:

- Justin: not enough time to really work on this idea properly. Too much on.
- Dale: technology issues, getting system to work - only just really working properly this week. Has limited scope to do activities planned. Lesson: don't be too ambitious about scope.
- logistics: Hayden (teacher) quit half way through, delays meant not being able to deliver to previously planned groups (ie now preapps only) at end of year, so had to squeeze sessions into 2 hour blocks (students finish in 2 weeks). Also meant that not working with groups that Justin teaches, doesn't know students, what they've learned/been assessed for and when
- web in prim feature (putting webpages within OpenSim) still not available. So we're still using previous version of PushLMS (dialogue box). Web in prim has been promised by OpenSim OS developers by Xmas. This has menat we haven't been able to deliver everything we had planned in terms of activities.
- testing: after discussing activities in place, we have decided to only test for understanding of OH&S rather than Sustainability and Blg Docs and Plans as well, because the latter two activities are underdeveloped (other option is question/answer exercises, but this isn't really too meaningful since they do this on paper already...is basically sugar coating rather than truly new learning). SO giving all students OH&S question sheet at end of first general session (don't want to hit them with paper sheet as they arrive, [possibility of negatively influencing engagement), and then after OH&S session in Week 2.