dell poweredge mini farm

[muoto]

Hello,

i would like to know if anyone has any advice on building a small render farm with dell powedge rack servers.

do they run win7/8 as it seems that vray doesn't seems to be supported on windows server ?
any advice on cpu/mem config would also be nice

thanks

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Umh... well its like any normal PC... U install windows u want, u get the ram ammount u need and CPU u can live with... Its cheaper to buy pcs and build them urself but its more compact to go with farm. Also be sure u have spare soundproof room with AC if u wanna go with farm.

[Morbid Angel]

yeah rack blades are damn loud They usually come with no hard drives. So you have to factor in the cost of the hdds separately. Then the install of all the software, like windows, whatever else you want to use etc. Rack server in my opinion is good for small space/power consumption. But as dadal pointed out, sound proof room with ac!

[muoto]

OK i thought there were going to be drivers problems etc...
i might ask Dell about it.
i want support for the hardware, so i rather go for dell instead of building everything.

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

U can get the same support by getting it off proper custom pc vendor. Many pc shops now build and support their systems.

[Morbid Angel]

OK i thought there were going to be drivers problems etc...
i might ask Dell about it.
i want support for the hardware, so i rather go for dell instead of building everything.

Dell is good. In fact, I bought a few dells recently (workstations) and one had been having a bsod. I just went to their site run their support tool, it did some driver downloads for chipsets etc, and bsod went away. Also, dell has good support and warranty. Something to be mindful of.

Do consider looking on ebay first, I bought a whole bunch of hardware there, worth a shot for the $.

[Donald2B]

How much power do you have available?
Are the noise restrictions / limitations?
What about cooling?

These three questions are pretty important, especially if you are set on doing a rack type server setup. Rack servers have very different needs than traditional workstations. My renderfarm, when fully loaded is a screaming banshee! I would NOT be able to keep my sanity if I was anywhere near that room! Not to mention the amount of cooling needed for that room to keep things cool and running within heat limits!

[kalamazandy]

When i was at whirlpool I had to work within corporate limitations and still managed ok. my "rack" was a $300 off brand metroshelving unit that held 15 Dell 670's, which at the time, were good. For the cost of that, I would have been able to afford all of 4 blade machines. 12 dual CPU workstations, or 4 blade machines. Oh, and that included the 10ton AC unit for the room, and 3 extra power runs. You can put 5 machines like that on one circuit without a problem. That farm is now outdated and old. But those machines are something to Someone. Old blade servers are more like garbage. All of these machines were still Dell, and under normal warranty. The blade machines, just added That much extra cost. I had to factor in the cabinet and initial hardware first, so it's not going to be 3x the cost for everyone.

Remember that your machines aren't going to last more than 5-6 years, and even that's a stretch. One of your software could come out with and update tomorrow that makes your current CPU outdated. Or maybe someone switches to GPU only rendering, which you can add easier in a workstation. I mean, they will work, but I hear one new dual processor machine now renders faster than all 12 of those machines put together, with vray. Different instruction sets = different speeds for the same GHz. It's incredibly difficult to compare apples to apples when it comes to CPUs.

So that's my experience, which may or may not help, but there it is anyway.
Oh, a good KVM switch is also needed for that. I also got that from Dell. Although, you can remote monitor in once everything is installed.

[muoto]

thanks for the feedback.

my farm...well...couldn't really name it a farm.
i plan on having 2 or 3 poweredge 520 servers with dual cpu. Still looking for the right config. (I rather go for 2U configs, probably the ventilators will be a big bigger, so less noisy)

I plan to having them in my basement, which has a cool constant temperature, and noise won't be a problem i hope

[muoto]

Hmm...only problems seems that win7/8 is not supported in the poweredge systems...
and they don't really know yet if it's anyway possible to install win7/8 (driver problem?)