Setting up a render farm properly...

[Ramsay]

I have recently made several new quad core machines that I intend to use as a render farm using Max and Vray. Now they are all working happily with no problems I'm interested to know how you guys manage your farms. What I am specifically interested in is how you guys update software on the machines so they are all the same software wise.

I have True Image Workstation so thought about just installing all the software on one machine then just mirroring the hard disk onto the other machines but that won't work because of machines needing different drivers and windows would be unhappy too.

Surely there must be an easier way than installing everything on each machine one by one?

[EricCamper]

my experience is that you have to install each and then copy all your ini files and perhaps create a bat file also. I installed backburner server as a service on each node and manager as a service on mine. We tried to PUSH the software over the network but in the end it was just easier to do manually. Make copies of all your disks and then go to town.

[thablanch]

We just got a few new machines, and the <cloned> ones are quite messed up...
Of course, depending what - several new machines -means to you. I figured out that running around in the office for less than an hour, before people comes in in the morning, ain't that bad...

[instinct]

There's very different approaches actually. The more automation you want the more initial work is to be done. So it only makes sense when you do have a lot of maschines to take care of. One way is unattended installs. Basically you start with your regular xp CD. Then slipstream all updates and SPs. Then slipstream settings and software. In the end you got a CD that autoinstalls XP with preset settings and only asks for a CD-Key during install (you can preset it too, but then you need a CD/Slave). It has a big downside tho as you have to keep it uptodate with newer software, updates, service packs etc etc.

There's also a bunch of ways to push software from a deployment server as noted before. All these require either a lot of time, a lot of money or both :P So you have to think twice if it is actually worth the hassle.

For maintaining a readily set up farm there's a lot of ways too. From centralised managment software to push updates, change settings/Env Vars etc to employing a person to take care of that to custom solutions...it's a wide wide field...

Kind Regards,
Thorsten