I work on a team where we build around and run Open edX. It's incredibly complicated to run because it's not built as an open source product. It's just that edX open sources their software after the fact, so they're not investing in making it easy for anyone to run, of to contribute features.
On the team I'm a part of, our strategy is to build open source tools around Open edX, using it as a site builder that stitches together all our external services (video hosting, live conferencing, course content, quizzes, web-facing portal, forum, etc.). That is, until we cover enough scope that we can start to replace it with a flexible and lightweight LMS that would basically just do the aggregation.
IMO it's not necessarily a good fit for the LMS category to try and build a gigantic software codebase that handles everything the way every single learning institution wants it. You end up with a glorified site builder with a bunch of specialized features tacked on.
I'm not an ops guy, but I know it was a constant source of trouble in our team and a large challenge to keep it running smoothly. For us it took 2-3 experienced engineers something like 2 years to have a stable and smoothly running production environment at scale.
If you start from scratch today things may have gotten better. You might want to look at https://github.com/overhangio/tutor, I know Régis has been hard at work making it easier to run Open edX.
On the team I'm a part of, our strategy is to build open source tools around Open edX, using it as a site builder that stitches together all our external services (video hosting, live conferencing, course content, quizzes, web-facing portal, forum, etc.). That is, until we cover enough scope that we can start to replace it with a flexible and lightweight LMS that would basically just do the aggregation.
IMO it's not necessarily a good fit for the LMS category to try and build a gigantic software codebase that handles everything the way every single learning institution wants it. You end up with a glorified site builder with a bunch of specialized features tacked on.