Power Save option on rendernodes

[jonasa]

Hi All...

We have decided to stride towards becoming a CO2 neutral company and one of the main issues being trying to reduce our power consumption.

However... as you all know, power is quite frankly an essential part of doing visualisations. Then again, we have 10 rendernodes that tend to be left on most the time for network rendering - I was wondering I anyone knows a good power saving setup for render nodes.

I have tried various forms of standby and hibernation modes - but that is no good since they still need to wake up whenever needed by Backburner (or similar net-work rendering software.

Any Ideas?

NB... being situated in Scotland and in an listed building, solar panels and wind turbines are ourt of the question

[RErender]

I guess you could save some electricity by trading your farm boxes for some dual core laptops, for what they are they are pretty powerfull these days and have good effiecency and energy saving routines.

[moshenko]

Deadline (http://software.franticfilms.com/) has a power-save component to it that wakes up nodes when needed. I've done some research on this and I'm planning on developing something for Max/Backburner that accomplishes the same thing to help save power in my studio. In the meantime, you can do some research on "magic packets" and "wake-up on LAN" to see if your hardware will support it.