Operating system (OS) choices
The Sakai CLE is OS neutral. It is typically run on any of the numerous Linux distributions. Examples of common Linux distributions include as CentOS, Debian GNU/Linux, Fedora, Gentoo Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), SuSe Linux, Ubuntu. Sakai CLE can Sakai can also run on Mac OS X server, Microsoft Windows and Sun Solaris. Operating systems other than Linux are not nearly as well tested, and all of the community QA servers are running Linux, so this is generally the recommendation.
Java
Sakai 2.9.0 has been tested most thoroughly with Oracle's Java SE 6, a.k.a. Java 1.6 . It also should be compatible with Java SE 7, aka Java 1.7 . Certain files, such as *.jsp and *.jws, require compilation so downloading and attempting to use only the run time environment (JRE 6.0 or JRE 7.0) will not suffice. If you find Sun's version and naming conventions confusing, see Sun Java SE Naming and Versions for an outline of their practices.
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Oracle's Sun Java J2SE 5.0 (a.k.a Java 1.5) has completed the EOL process and is no longer supported. If are still running Java 1.5 please note that security vulnerabilities exist in JDK/JRE 5.0 updates 1.5.0_17 and earlier. |
Application server choices
Apache Tomcat 7 is the recommended, and most thoroughly tested servlet container, and is most often used with a web server like Apache Http Server. Several schools run their Tomcats with Windows IIS and nginx proxies without issue. A few schools such as Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and the Universidad de Guadalajara report have deployed Sakai on JBoss, in the past.
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| Sakai 2.8.0 and previous releases require Tomcat 5.5 out of the box but can be configured in custom builds to run under Tomcat 7. Tomcat 7 is the requirement for running Sakai 2.9.0+. There are some changes to the Tomcat configuration required to get Sakai to startup in the source or binary form under Tomcat 7. Please see this page for more information! |
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| In Sakai CLE 2.7.0 a Websphere module was included in the release in order to facilitate deployment to a Websphere/Db2 production environment; however, support has waned and the Websphere option is currently considered deprecated. |
Database choices
Sakai CLE production Sakai production installations typically run either Oracle 10g/11g or MySQL 5.1/5.5. It should be noted that Sakai is not limited to these database choices and integration with other RDBMS systems is not difficult. In the past at least one installation used Microsoft SQL Server while requests for PostgreSQL integration are occasionally raised on the Sakai developers list. However, to date no one in the Sakai Community has stepped forward to support alternatives to either Oracle or MySQL, a prerequisite for adding additional database options to the release.
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| Support for IBM Db2 was added for the Sakai CLE 2.7.0 release but for 2.8.0 DB2 conversion scripts were not updated or tested and are currently considered deprecated, including for 2.9.x. |
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| A demo version of Sakai includes HSQLDB; it should never be deployed in production. |
Clustering, file storage and load balancing strategies
A typical Sakai CLE cluster Sakai cluster is comprised of one or more application servers running one or more instances of Tomcat 7 operating either in standalone mode or behind the Apache HTTP 2.2 web server. Each Tomcat instance runs a full copy of the Sakai CLE. The cluster is backed by a single database providing a transactional store of information.
Storing binary content outside the database is a configurable option in Sakai and highly recommended from a performance standpoint. Most Sakai schools with sizable user populations opt for network-attached storage (NAS) or storage area network (SAN) solutions. Load balancing is provided by Apache (using mod_jk, mod_proxy_balancer or mod_proxy_ajp) or dedicated hardware solutions such as F5 BIG-IP, NetScaler or Zeus.
External Authentication choices
The Sakai CLE can Sakai can integrate with a variety of external authentication services including CAS, Kerberos, LDAP, Shibboleth and WebAuth.
Integrating with student information systems
Sakai Community institutions have integrated their Sakai CLE installations Sakai installations with Banner, Datatel and Peoplesoft as well as a variety of home-grown student information systems (SIS).
The Sakai CLE has Sakai has two basic approaches to integrating data from external systems. Most sites use a combination of these approaches. The first approach is to use the internal Sakai "provider" APIs. These APIs are places for Sakai to "consult" while Sakai is running. There are APIs for User Identity, User Directory, Course Listing and User Roles.
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If there is a desire to "push" information into the Sakai CLE, there Sakai there are two approaches - Quartz and web services.
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A more common approach to pushing configuration information into Sakai is through web services. Any of Sakai's APIs can be accessed by web services. Web service access points have been developed for many of the common Sakai APIs used for configuration. These SOAP web services can be called from PHP, Python, Perl, Java, .NET or any other language. The Sakai CLE web service data structures are kept simple to insure the widest possible interoperability with as many languages as possible. Administrators often build scripts to pull data from their SIS system and populate the Sakai CLE with Sakai with that data. These scripts may be automated using cron or manually executed by the administrator at the proper time during a semester.
This combination of pull/push configuration capabilities allows for a very wide range of integration possibilities for the Sakai CLE.