Blade server for render

[tecsun]

Hi all,

I'm looking at Dell or HP blade server to build up a small render farm, with Intel XEON E7 processor (10 cores!!) & Win Server 2008 running. Anyone has any idea to share? Like, will there be any problem mixing with my existing win7pro machines? or does it worth giving up cheap & fast i7 2600k and get xeon?

[scheinbarreal]

we bought some Dell XPS 8300 Desktop-PC with Intel I7, because there are "cheap" (1.100 €) and silent.

[Donald2B]

I think the type of machine is based on what type of work you do and the associated timelines.

For us, we have VERY tight deadlines and the iCore7 machines were just too slow, so we went with high-density servers with Dual Hexacore xeons w/ 24GB ram each. When distributing renders upwards of 15k pixels wide, I can get them out in about 2hrs or less, with LOTS of glossy reflections and GI.

[super gnu]

you have to consider cost vs. performance. im willing to bet you could get more rendering horsepower for a given budget, using consumer grade i7 boxes than you could with 6 or 10 core xeons. they would take up more space, and possibly use more power, but they would be quieter, and assuming the same budget, more powerful- those 10 core xeons cost about £3k each!!! and thats for a 2.26 ghz chip. for the price of one of those chips you could buy 3 or even 4, 3.4 ghz i7 machines(thats whole machines, not chips.)

[super gnu]

the closer you get to the cutting edge the less value for money you get.. its a simple rule. unless you have limited space, or issues using many lesser machines (not a problem with vray, within reason) then youll not get the best value buying the fastest chips.

[super gnu]

or if you were feeling creative... these offer excellent bang for the buck!

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...d=2051&subcat=

beat that price/ performance with a xeon system!

[tecsun]

I checked with autodesk and was told 3dsmax won't run on win server 2008, and it seems their website has no win server 2008 in the list at all. And we don't have E7 here yet!

Edited: Forgot to mention the workstation is for arch viz use.

scheinbarreal -
That is not 2600k, is it? So you can't overclock that much? Try customizing but after deducting DVD drives and Win7 (I already have 2 extra copy buying VLK) it's cheaper to assemble a system myself than buying Dell.

Donald2B -
Deadline... yeah, it's always tight. Client asked:"I thought you just need 2 days to render a 2 mins animation, why you need more than that?". Which hexacore xeons you go with? I'm looking at E5645 but I'm not sure how that is compare to E3-1280. The latter seems only 1 CPU on single mobo.

super gnu -
yeah... that made me so confuse. I'm happily counting budget for 2x Xeon E5645, then figure out with just RM300 (USD100) more I could get 3x i7 2600k!! 3 of it would take up quite a lot of space which I want to avoid but the power is so much tempting, and think of it in optimistic way, I could recruit one more artist and the workstation is ready for him >.< which one sound better?

=========================
Anyway now... I just got the price out, please give me some opinion:
Option 1 (US$ 2784.00)
Xeon E5645 x 2
Intel S5520SC Board
Geforce GTX580

Option 2 (US$ 2884.00)
Core i7 2600k x 3
Asus P8P67LE (I just need render power, this should be alright?)
1 x Geforce GTX580
2 x Geforce GT220

For all
12GB RAM
Win 7 Pro

What do you all think?

[tecsun]

Btw, anyone has idea 2600k vs Xeon E5645 vs E3-1280 when it comes to vray render?

[Donald2B]

I went with the Xeon X5660 w/ 24GB Ram.

We also used a superchassis from supermicro that basically has 4 servers in a 2U Rack mount case. They share a 1400Watt PSU. Since we are not doing any GPU rendering yet, we opted to use the onboard video on the server boards for simplicity.

I have 4 of the superchassis server units for a total of 16 total individual servers, each with dual Xeon X5660 and 24GB Ram running Win7x64 Pro. I think each superchassis unit cost somewhere in the $13,000 USD so that roughly worked out to $3250/server. Which isn't too horribly bad. I could have probably saved a little money on the processors by going with a lower model, but since we bought so many at one time, they gave us a discount on the processors so it worked out great for us.

These give me the flexibility during VERY tight deadlines to just crank through renders. I also like that they take half the amount of rack space than the older nodes that I have. In the end, we just didn't have the room for a bunch of single cpu machines and the extra power consumption for all those individual computers.

I know that everyone has their own different situations and timelines and this was our best option. It did take me about 2 days to build, setup and install all of the servers, so I guess you need to keep that cost in mind.

[renderfarmer]

We're looking very seriously at getting some Dell R210 II servers. They're 1U's that are only 15.5" deep.

Our internal testing has shown that an i7-2600K (quad 3.4GHz) is on par with a single X5650 (hexa 2.66GHz) - your mileage may vary. We're hoping that the R210 IIs will work with i7-2600K, but if not, a Xeon E3-1270 only costs $75 more... Add 16GB RAM from the cheapest available source and you have a potentially super tidy render node for $1000 with a 3 year warranty and excellent potential re-sale value in 2 years. The cheapest I could find a X5650's cpu is for $1030 at the moment...

Obviously this isn't as space efficient as blade servers, and you're limited to 4 RAM slots so 32GB RAM would cost you a lot more. But for our needs these sound pretty good.

Does anyone have any experience with Dell R210 II's or the previous R210?

[tecsun]

We ended up buying 3 new i7-2600k here. I contacted HP/Dell dealer, giving them US$ 2884.00 budget and they came back to me with HP Z400 using Xeon W3520. It costs more than the budget, and not as fast as single i7 2600k. So at least 3 persons get to use faster workstation and work faster , and those old workstation can give to new trainee and save up some money buying new one for the trainee.

[renderfarmer]

Sounds like a good choice. A single 2GHz Xeon E7 10 core CPU alone would have eaten up your entire budget. Not really cost effective unless you're Weta Digital and server density is an overriding buying criteria.

Our first Dell 210 II will arrive this week. We got it with a E3-1270 (3.4GHz sandy bridge Xeon) and 1GB RAM for $795 + $35 shipping. I ordered 16GB of RAM form Amazon for $96 (dell wanted over $300 for that much) so total cost is $891 + $35 shipping. We're happy with the price but now we have to put this machine through its paces to see if it's really worth what we're paying. Our concerns are actual rendering speed compared to i7-2600K and X5650, comparative power consumption, noise, heat, and general ease of use. I'll post some pics and results when we have them.

[super gnu]

id be interested to know the power consumption results there compared to the more high end machines.. imho thats the main issue with using lots of cheaper kit, but i never saw a proper comparison. you should get less noise (less dense, etc, but depends on component selection)

[renderfarmer]

id be interested to know the power consumption results there compared to the more high end machines.

Dell has delayed our server by a week so I still can't say how it compares but I did measure power consumption on one of our dual X5650 servers (using a P3 Kill A Watt).

I dug up a Dell 210 II Energy star spec sheet for comparison:

4U Asus Server - Idle/Full: 76W/276W
2x X5650
6x 2GB RAM
1x 15KRPM SATA
Win2K8 R2

1U Dell 210 II - Idle/Full: 43.2W/104.7W
1x E3-1240
4x 2GB RAM
2x 7200RPM SATA
Win2K8 R2

This is an apples to oranges comparison as the X5650 and E3-1240 are two different generation chips, but it looks like two single socket machines would idle about 12% higher but have a 25% advantage at load (assuming that two of these Sandy Bridge machines equates to one Nehalem machine).

I'll update this as soon as I get real world results for the Dell.

[renderfarmer]

Well, Dell were taking their sweet time building our R210 II and in the mean time we changed our minds and are now looking at getting a second hand Dell M1000E blade chassis and slowly filling that up...