need your help in building a rackmount render server

[Kinetic99]

Hello and thanks for your time,

After looking into a few rendering solutions, I think this is the best solution to for now.
I am looking into a box or rack-like rendering farm that contains something like 8-10 render nodes. As far as I know now, each node with a dual Xeon, video card, ram

Does anybody have any experience using rack or box mounted render farms like this with 3DS max Vray? What hardware should I be looking for? Are there reputable brands that build good units?

any advice would help

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

It either CPU or GPU system. So the video card u mentioned is going to be build in in case of cpu system.

Here u can find good deals :- ) :

http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-Proliant-...item51b3df09a3

Just dig in lots of good offers around...

[Morbid Angel]

What dadal pointed out was a good set. You have to take into account several things:

They drain a lot of power, so you must have additional power ready. Usually 15 amps will get you 2 blades, max 3. So 16 blades will require a lot, unless you are in the office space with proper power, it will be an issue.
They are very loud. So loud in fact, like vacuum cleaners. So you must have separate, special space to hold them, sound isolated (not just in another room).
They are very hot, due to small parts and compact space, they run very very hot, thus the fans in side are small and powerful, able to spin at some 12000 rpm. So they better be kept it well airconditioned space, otherwise, they run at 90 deg C, and over heat.

How I know this, is because I recently built similar farm, though not blades, I bought 4 1u supermicro servers (8 total xeons) 2 in each 1u.

I bought a special sound proof server rack hoping it would dump the sound enough at my home office, but even that was not enough.

The other thing to consider is software licenses:

Some IT people will suggest (and I agree with them) that it is better to buy less more powerful machines then more less powerful ones because of license costs. For 16 machines (from dadal's link) you will need to have that many 3ds max, vray, windows licenses and whatever else. This can add up to a lot!

I've tried modding the 1u servers to be quiet and it did work I had to replace the heatsinks with after market ones, install custom slinet fans into them etc. And even though I could make 1 of them very quiet, the powersupply has a built in fan that is also very very loud, and its hardwired into the psu, so you cannot simply replace it.

After that I just said, screw it, and placed the servers behind two doors, into a cold space and was done with it

Another hard lesson learned

Hope this helps in your quest!

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

You dont need licenses for 3ds max. Just vray.

[Morbid Angel]

I don't know about that. In deadline using 3ds max, always brings up the ui, and it asks for license. Maybe its deadline related?

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

I don't know about that. In deadline using 3ds max, always brings up the ui, and it asks for license. Maybe its deadline related?

Could be. Try using backburner. It should work with no licenses even after trial expires.

[Morbid Angel]

Could be. Try using backburner. It should work with no licenses even after trial expires.

no. never I had enough of bb back in the day.

I don't use max for production so its not an issue.

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Oh come on you cant have enought of our bellowed BB ! =D Its such an awesome piece of software haha

[Kinetic99]

great info Dmitry and thanks.
But multiple licenses of 3ds max and Vray for multiple nodes (or machines)?? why would that be the case?
My goal is just to use this rendering rack for pure processing power. SO I can work from one or two workstations and make a render but use the collective power of all the CPU's in the rack to perform the render; thereby making it faster.
Mabye my logic is not sound, but that is my goal. Can you please advise?

[Morbid Angel]

so what you are talking about is distributed rendering, still needs additional license.