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If you’d rather run your own BigBlueButton server than use the free tier or a commercial provider, you install BigBlueButton separately and then point Open edX at it as a self-hosted LTI provider. This gives you full control over capacity, data residency, and recording retention, at the cost of running and maintaining the server yourself. 1. Provision a server. BigBlueButton is installed on a clean, dedicated Ubuntu 22.04 64-bit server. For production, the recommended minimums are 16 GB memory, 8 CPU cores with strong single-thread performance, 500 GB free disk space (less if recordings are disabled), a public hostname for an SSL certificate, and TCP ports 80/443 plus a UDP range open for media traffic. Smaller specs (4 cores/8 GB) are fine for development or small pilots. The server must not run another web server or reverse proxy on ports 80/443, since BigBlueButton needs a valid SSL certificate for browsers to allow webcam and microphone access. 2. Install BigBlueButton. Run the official bbb-install.sh script from the BigBlueButton project, which installs the core BigBlueButton components (and optionally Greenlight, a front end, and the LTI tools) in one pass. After installation, sudo bbb-conf --check and sudo bbb-conf --status confirm the server and its services are healthy. sudo bbb-conf --secret returns the server URL and shared secret you’ll need for the Open edX side. 3. Install the LTI components. BigBlueButton connects to Open edX (and other LTI-compliant platforms like Desire2Learn or Blackboard) through two additional components: bbb-lti-broker, which handles incoming LTI launch requests, and bbb-apps-room, which renders the classroom interface for instructors and students. Passing the -t <key>:<secret> option to bbb-install.sh installs both and registers an LTI consumer key/secret pair in one step. Once installed, the LTI launch URL is available at https://<your-hostname>/lti, and you can verify it with a tool like the TSUGI LTI test page before connecting it to a course. 4. Connect it to Open edX. In Studio, enable the Live app for your course (see “The Live app” above), select “Commercial/self-hosted” from the “Select a plan” dropdown for BigBlueButton, and enter the LTI launch URL, key, and secret from your server. Save, and BigBlueButton will appear in the course’s “Live” tab. 5. Maintain the server. Ongoing responsibilities include applying BigBlueButton updates by re-running bbb-install.sh, monitoring disk space for recordings, configuring a firewall and, if needed, a TURN server for users behind restrictive networks, and renewing your SSL certificate. Larger deployments serving many courses or a full institution often move to an Ansible-based or Scalelite cluster setup rather than a single server, for easier scaling and consistent configuration across machines. Self-hosting is a good fit if you have the systems administration capacity to run and patch a dedicated server, need full control over recordings and data, or expect usage beyond what the free tier’s 60-minute/25-participant limits allow. If you’d rather not manage a server, a commercial hosting provider or your Open edX hosting partner can typically deploy and maintain BigBlueButton for you on the same LTI connection.