Lotus LearningSpace R5.01 Deployment Guide

210 Lotus LearningSpace R5.01 Deployment Guide

15.1 Scenarios about placing the courseware

The content in LearningSpace 5 can be traditional courseware on a Web server

or provided by the live or collaborative features of a LearningSpace Collaboration

server, such as discussion databases or live session materials. Since the

collaboration server has its own data storing mechanism, the point of interest

may focus on where to store conventional courseware.

15.1.1 Providing content with a LearningSpace Core server

In the beginning, you can use the Core server to provide the content to users. If

you do not have a wide-spread topology, or the load on the Core server is not too

heavy, then this could be the most efficient way of storing the content.

Use virtual directory instead of LearningSpace subdirectory

It may be a good idea to store content outside of the LearningSpace installation

directory, or even outside of the IIS root. The content itself is data rather than a

program from the point of archiving, so the virtual directory should point to a data

directory. For suggestions on hard disk partitioning, see “Hard disk partitioning”

on page 80.

15.1.2 Storing content on local or remote servers

Storing content on the Core server seems to be the simplest way of providing

courseware. However, in case of a heavy load on the Core server, or having a

wide geographical topology with considerable network response time, you might

prefer to set up content servers on each site. For example, if you have sites A, B,

and others, you can store contents for users at A on a content server at A,

contents for users at B on a content server at B, and so on.

This approach can have several advantages:

򐂰 The content can be reached at LAN speed.

򐂰 If the Core server is on the Internet (for example, hosted by an ASP), the

content can be behind your firewall.

Since storing content on distributed servers seems to be ideal, there are some

points to keep in mind:

򐂰 Content references must direct the user to the right location.

򐂰 You need to set up a synchronization mechanism for the contents.