Tuning the Canvas Docker Ecosystem : Tuning and optimization suggestions

Abstract: Canvas is a LMS used by many colleges, universities, and K-12 schools. The primary purpose of Canvas is for the instructors to organize courses, create assignments, and enter students’ grades. Canvas LMS is a web application. The response time performance of the Canvas is essential for its users. Both instructors and students claim that they experience slow response times from this system. Given the vast numbers of users, the effect of delayed responses is multiplied by a very large number; hence, improving the performance of such a system has a large economic and social impact. Moreover, many other applications utilize a set of services that communicate to realize the overall web service; hence, the results could also positively impact other services. This thesis focuses on the Canvas when running in a Docker container environment and proposes solutions to tune the system to optimize the performance of Canvas. This thesis uses experiments on the following aspects of the Canvas: Canvas RESTful API, Canvas GUI, the underlying system of the Docker containers, Canvas webserver, VM configurations, etc. This thesis provides tuning and optimization suggestions that could benefit Canvas developers and Canvas administrators.