Can Moodle store uploaded files on another server?

To clarify the question. It is not clear if the Moodle easily allows the set-up to be changed so that any image (or files uploaded) can be put on another server. We might want to do this for particular types of files, such as movies or audio clips.

Yes you can. The Moodle dataroot is set in the configuration page. The dataroot is the location you want all Moodle data to be saved; course information, users info, etc. As long as the server Moodle is on itself has as connection to the other servers you want to use then its possible.

For instance if you have a media server connected to your webserver then you can set your rootdata to “/Volumes/media/folder_name.” You will need to make sure that this directory should be readable AND WRITEABLE by the web server user, but it should not be accessible directly via the web. On a PC you would just need to map the drive (‘C:\media/folder_name’).

Another way to do it would be to use symbolic links to reference locations other than the one set for the dataroot in the Moodle configuration file.

My example:

We have some media files that a professor wanted to use in Moodle. The audio files far exceed the file limit we set for the site, as well as we didn’t want the files in the Moodle dataroot, since its restricted to all except a specific user. So the files are uploaded to another location.

A symbolic link was created in the Moodle dataroot, /moodle_instance/moodle_data/9/files and /moodle_instance/moodle_data/9/ipodcast

The folders “files” and “ipodcast” are symbolic links to other locations, no way related to Moodle. But when the files are uploaded into those locations, the files show up in Moodle for that course and can be referenced for Resources.