rendering on windows server?

[Nickh]

Hi,

I have just purchased a new server running windows server 2008. Its a dual quad xeon, so I'd like to render on it. However I am being recommended that I should not, as this could hinder its other job as a file manager (this is all it will be doing as there will be no mail server - the network is purely for 3ds max\vray working and rendering) and defeat the object of getting a decent machine for this job.

To me this sounds over kill, and it should be up for the job of rendering and file managing.

I know to some extent I could suck it and see, but as its not up and running at the moment I wondered if anyone had any advice on this. In previous setups at past companies I've always ran manager and server on the server machine, but now I'm being told that it 'was probably not the main file server', and 'no one renders on their server machine'.

I have heard from another source to avoid server 2008, and just go for 2003.

Again, any advice on this would be appreciated.

Cheers
Nick

[Morbid Angel]

I am not sure about operating system, but we used to render on our manager machine fine, it was a dual xeon at a time.
So long as you set the backburner or your render to be at lowest priority it should run other tasks no problem.

[instinct]

That depends a lot on the network and load. If it is the fileserver for 100 slaves that can be pretty daunting. We regularly max out our fileservers easily without rendering on them or doing anything else besides serving files heh.

Regards,
Thorsten

[Nickh]

so on a small network of up to 10 machines it should be able to render and file serve ok then...