Render farm strategies.

[DPS]

Has anyone tried the following:

Submit jobs to back burner with DBR ticked
Submit to all servers
Run two servers
Job 1 will take everything
Job 2 will start with just server two.
As job 1 starts to near the end of its rendering job 2 will start picking up the buckets.


Upsides: In my thinking it will increase efficiency over running either one server or splitting the farm into two.

Downsides: job 1 may be finish up with one bucket rendering from each node. Leaning towards the idea of splitting farm in two.

Anyone mind sharing their ideas?

[flino2004]

I only have 4 nodes plus WS and laptop.... So summit the job from my laptop and I have groups
1 with the 2 fastest nodes+WS
1 with 3nodes+WS

The slowest is for flat color elevations and when I don't have the rush.

[cheerioboy]

Interesting idea to run two servers. My setup is similar to your thinking except I only run one server. So one machine is the host of the jobs and all the rest are DR nodes. It was worked very well for my needs with large still images. Seems like running two servers might be a bit cumbersome to be aware each time you send a job, which server it's going to...

[flino2004]

let's be clear.... bb server is a node, bb manager is different task but it can be a render node as well. one of my rendernode is the manager and I have groups to pick the computers that I want to use when I send multiple images. if I'm going to use DR I only pick one computer and the others computers of course from Vray's dialogue window. with bb monitor you could say that one rendering starts after other job get done .... usually I do that when I'm pre-calculating GI to be used in DR

[chriserskine]

I've been trying out a few different things, with 2 - 5 BB servers and the rest dr.

depends on how many different renders you are sending off and what res they are each.

I think i prefer 3-5 for what I'm doing. I feel its a bit safer in case the renders get stuck on last few buckets. also your going to spend more time loading scenes the less BB servers are running.

I've been find the new dr to be great for having nodes just jump on where needed. and you can also manually drop them off when its almost done, which is nice.