Small Render Farm

[cristoforo]

Just wondering how people are managing their render farms. Currently I have (5) computers and always using vray's DR except when I do animations, then I use backburner. To view and use the computers I use a smart switch with one monitor, keyboard, and mouse. I plan to soon add more computers. Has everyone found it quicker and/or more reliable to use backburner instead of DR for renderings? What method does everyone use to view the computers.....remote desktop? Right now I am the only one using these computers. Soon, I hope to find some help. At that point, would it be best to have computers dedicated as render nodes separate from the computers used to do all the work? Probably so. I know that when I am rendering (and I use all the computers) to continue working could be a bit difficult in some programs. Though I continue working in autocad and usually have no problems. Once I arrive at say (10) computers, should I then have a dedicated server? RIght now my server is just one of the computers I use to work with and use in the render farm. Would it not be a good idea to continue like that? I am not really sure what the benefit is of a dedicated server. I want to be able to take advantage of every computer there is! Thanks for any suggestions. Better to know before spending money and making some stupid mistake!

[SteveC]

Hi Cristoforo, your set up sounds very similar to mine, I have a workstation,
which is used purely for modelling etc and nothing else.
I also have an 450GB external hard drive connected to my workstation
which is does an automatic incrimental backup of my file server each
day.

7 rendernodes which have all the windows XP stuff turned off (so it
runs/looks more like windows 2000). All these have installed on them
is max, vray, and backburner, nothing else and are used purely for
rendering only. I access all of these, and the file server using a KVM.

I dont leave them on 24/7 so it's a bit of a ball ache going through
each machine starting up either the max 7,8 or 9 spawner or the
backburner server software when you boot up. I've never looked in to
using a remote desktop software, just lazy I think, but this would
definately be a good option if I knew what to look for.

I also have a seperate file server, which is an old dual xeon 3.2
workstation, this has 4 SCSI drives in, 1 used purely for the OS, 1
is for the job files, 1 is for my bitmaps/images library and the last
one is used as an archive, I keep copies of all my software, upgrades,
pluggins etc on here, then its easily accessible from any machine on
the network. I also use this machine as the backburner manager, but
never takes part in any actual rendering.

All this is connected using a gigabit network, which is great for the
amounts of data that is transfered between machines each day.

Personally, I think it is better to use dedicated render nodes seperate
from computers that are used to do your work, I think the 2 types of
machine a fairly different in their needs. A render node only needs
the bare minimum of drivers and system services running and only
needs the software installed on it that is going to be used for rendering,
max, vray, backburner, (plus any pluggins you may have installed in
your working version of max) it does'nt need anyhting else. where as
a workstation you would usually have all the other associated software
installed that is associated with what we do, which starts adding to the
amount of system resources needed, (eating up more ram etc).

I also recon a dedicated server is a must, It might be just me, but going
on previouse experiance when I had a combined workstation/fileserver
go tits up, it was a complete nightmare wondering if you'd lost
everything, or just your jobs, or just your bitmaps. Also some sort of
independent back up drive aswell, I keep a full backup of my jobs on
there, which is incrimentally backed up each day, I also keep a backup
of my bitmap library, My render node setup (inluding OS) and my
workstation setup (Including OS), basically all the stuff you think you
would have nightmares about if you lost it.

This is the way my system is set up, someone with more idea about IT
may be able to suggest something better, but for me at the moment, this
seems to be working great.

Hope this helps you in some way.

stevec

[cristoforo]

Thanks Steve for the input. I too back up daily my files with an external hard drive. What brand KVM switch do you use? I have lots of problems with mine....actually there are two (4) port switches used together...KRAUN is the brand. Often either the mouse does not respond, or the keyboard, or sometimes when I start the computers in the morning, if the switch is not already on a particular computer, that computer has no video when I click on it. All I can do at that point is reset the computer. As for the dedicated server....I just feel that if there is that additional computer there, why not use at also as a render node? No harm, right? At least I have seen no harm. On your render nodes is the hard drive partitioned? Will this make any difference on the performance of the computer? The last two computers I bought, they partioned the hard drive with a small C: for programs and D: for data....even though I had no intention of putting data on those machines....the data is all on the server. I am wondering now if the computers are running less efficiently?

[SteveC]

Hi,

I've heard of that problem before with KVM's loosing sync with keyboards,
mouses etc, cant say I've had the problem myself, I'm using a D-Link
8 port DKVM 8E, seems to be very reliable and I've not had any lose of
mouse/keyboard usage with it. You can also daisy chain it with up to 8
other KVM's, giving you potential control of 64 machines, I think.

I think weather you use the dedicated server as a render node or not
is just down to personal choice, the reason I dont use it as a node is
because I figured it's already got enough on its plate, especially with
backburner jobs, running manager and potentially monitor, I just like
to leave it alone, and not put unneeded stress on it.

My render nodes all have a single 80Gb hard drive with just 1 partition,
they each have 2 gig of ram and 4gig of swap drive. Not sure if it makes
any difference to performance, just having the 1 hardrive with 1 partition,
all my nodes are running with the bare minimum of software and services
needed, so I would'nt think that would have too great an impact on
performance. I personally dont see the point of an additional partition on
a render node, there's only the OS, max core install, backburner and
vray on it. Like you said, any other data is stored on your file server.

[joconnell]

For that type of thing - use tight vnc on the render nodes as a remote control program - http://www.tightvnc.com/ - There's also a program called vnc admin console that will scan your network for computers running the vnc server and give you a clickable list of machines you can connect to - http://www.mast-computer.com/c_10-l_en.html - It'll get you past the problems of machines having no mouse or keybord - most of the time this happens because a computer needs to have the mouse and keyboard connected as the machine is starting for it to recognise it.

As for the file server / render node debate, if you're using really heavy scenes with tonnes of textures then serving all of those files will have a hit on the cpu of the file server - put through a heavy render and take a look at the task manager for that machine to see how much of its resources are being used just as a file server. You can reduce the load on the cpu of the file server by getting a raid card that has its own controller on it - it'll use the processor on the raid card to deal with the disk i/o instead of using the machines cpu. If all of the machines are exact same spec you could do something like render 100 frames of the vray benchmark scene with one machine only as a file server, and then run through the exact same scene with the file server also rendering - see how much of an effect it has on the frame times of the non file server machines - if their frames are far slower then it'll give you an idea what damage is being done by using the file server to render too.If it's not that much of a difference then great - extra render node

After a while, the more machines you add in, the bottleneck becomes things like how fast your network and file server is as the scene files and textures need to be given to the render nodes and the rendered frames need to be saved out but for a smaller setup this shouldn't be a problem.

[cristoforo]

Thanks guys for the comments. Right now I am using a gigabit network switch....is there faster??

[SteveC]

cheers for the extra info joconnell, the tight vnc software looks very
handy, I'll definately give that a try.

[joconnell]

Yeah it's ahandy one alright - we have all of our render nodes downstairs in a cooled room - imagine the noise and heat having to work within reach of those things

As regards gigabit, as far as I know there's a few different levels of in terms of the speed that you get but I'm not a network guy so I couldn't tell you the differences. A lot of post houses base themselves around fibre networking for even higher speeds too. That said you only need that if you've got tens of machines and are throwing huge amounts of data around.

[muzzy]

For remote control, you can use windows XP's remote desktop connection.

[Dynedain]

My renderfarm (12 machines + workstations) is setup without monitors/keyboards. I do all the admin using VNC (free!). I also use Vsai's VRay Slave tools (do a search on this forum) for managing the various servers, rebooting, etc.

Then, I have Samurize setup to display CPU/RAM usage for every machine on the farm on my workstation's desktop background, so a quick glance will tell me what's going on in the farm. Then I launch VSai's tools to manage things, launch the monitor if necessary, and on the rare occaisions, use the tools to launch VNC to give me desktop access to each individual machine.

[cristoforo]

Maybe a stupid question...but is a dedicated server really something "different" or just another pc "dedicated" to storing all the data with perhaps more hard disk space than the other pc's and perhaps RAID going on? Does the processor make a difference on that computer? I assume the other computers are only taking info from the server...all the processing goes on in each render node. I'm asking because I am wondering if I can use an older computer (which is MUCH slower in rendering) as my dedicated server? That computer can then be the hub where backburner manager is, backburner monitor, the printer, etc. Is this not such a good idea?

[giraffe]

hi friends,
I want to learn if it is possible to use an old pc without a monitor as a render node.
I am sorry if this is a very stupid question, but I am very new to this thing.
Does this old pc need all graphic cards and monitor to be use it as a render node or is it some way possible to integrate into a system and only use cpu and ram of this pc for rendering?

[RErender]

hi friends,
I want to learn if it is possible to use an old pc without a monitor as a render node.
I am sorry if this is a very stupid question, but I am very new to this thing.
Does this old pc need all graphic cards and monitor to be use it as a render node or is it some way possible to integrate into a system and only use cpu and ram of this pc for rendering?

You will need some sort of graphics card to get it to boot, can be anything even some old pci card, if it is running XP or Vista you can just set up "remote desktop connection" to allow connections and use that to control the computer, or install a "VNC" software. You'll need a keyboard and mouse to set it up initialy but after that you should not need them, might need to make some settings in the bios to boot without a keyboard though.

[giraffe]

thanks for answer

so I need keyboard and mouse for installing things on it.
and one grapgic card so it can boot.
and what about monitor? do I need a monitor? or can I make it without a monitor? or the VNC software is something that offer me to use without monitor?

[zeronove]

using VNC or similar SW to remote control will allow you "to see" your old pc through your actual monitor; as an option, if your old one is near the new one you can consider to buy a KVM switch to control both using one gear

hope it helps