Render farm?

[EricKlein]

I just used Respower for the first time and I was really impressed. They've really got a great set up- you can do the whole job w/o even talking to them...

edit. I should add that I did talk to them serveral times and they were always available and helpful...

e.

[jujubee]

A little bit of a digression - I hope Vray gets released for Unix some time down the road...: http://news.com.com/Sun+plugs+softwa...?tag=nefd.lede

A buck a pop - the render I could do for $100...

[tricky]

A couple of questions about building a lot of Shuttle machines:

1) What do you do about OS software. I mean, XP Pro for each machine would be quite expensive.

2) Isn't there a limit of 10 connections to any one machine in the Windows XP environment? If I had 15 machines say and I was rendering animation frames, or DR'ing one high res image, wouldn't my network fall over every time this 10-machine-limit was brached?

[gilicom]

hi tricky the limit of 10 connections is a big problem
we use win 2k on a couple of our machins and for the while i render and save the frames on one of them since win 2k dosn't have that limt.

[tricky]

So is this only a problem when actually saving the individaual frames? What about sharing one image through DR between, say, 15 machines. Will 5 of them have a problem? Also, how about sharing resources. All our maps and files come off our central file server which is XP Pro. That would also be problematic, right?

Anyone have any experience with this?

[Da_elf]

am i getting this straight that if your server machine that held all the renders plus the source files was a win2k machine then you dont need to worry about the connection problem?

if that is so then here is another interesting question:
suppose all that stuff was on the 2k machine but the render was initiated from the xp machine. would there be a problem? or should the render be initiated from the 2k machine? i assume since with both DR and network rendering the outside computers need to log onto that computer then it would be a problem and the 2k idea is the solution to render. im assuming you cant get 12 backburner servers to log onto the 1 manager if the manager was on an XP machine

[tricky]

I share your confusion. I have never got a straight answer from anyone!

[gilicom]

as long as your manager and the comuter that you save the frame into are win 2k then everything will work fine,
but thats just me with my small garden farm (12 machines)
I had problems when the computer i was trying to save the frame to was win xp even with only 5 computers.

[serge]

as long as your manager and the comuter that you save the frame into are win 2k then everything will work fine,
but thats just me with my small garden farm (12 machines)
I had problems when the computer i was trying to save the frame to was win xp even with only 5 computers.

right i had no problem with that configuration (12 machines)
but when i add 6 new machines it was impossible for the 18 machines to writes frames into the w2k computer
now the best way i found to avoid this problem with the 18 machines
manager runing in the win 2k machines
frames written on w2003 server machine
for dr i can only use 10 machines i think that is a vray limitation
i'm not shure but if i remember dr vray 1.09 with max 5 can use more than 10 nodes

[gilicom]

frames written on w2003 server machine

so what your saying is that i can use winxp for slaves and win2003 server for the computer which is used for frame saving or do i need to have all the slaves running win 2k?

[tricky]

Could vlado confirm this - does Vray (latest build) have a limit with the number of machines it can use in a DR situation, even with, say 3 licenses of Vray?

Can anyone else backup the latest possible solution, i.e.
File server - Windows 2003 Server
Backburner Manager - Windows 2000
Workstations/rendermachines - Windows XP Pro

Will this work with 15, 20, 30 plus machines?

[ezrhythm]

USE LINUX for christ sakes!!!
My frame dump is on SUSE, Backburner on Windows machine... thats all.
Flawlesssss...

[Mathew Everett]

So is this only a problem when actually saving the individaual frames? What about sharing one image through DR between, say, 15 machines. Will 5 of them have a problem? Also, how about sharing resources. All our maps and files come off our central file server which is XP Pro. That would also be problematic, right?

Anyone have any experience with this?

Out sourcing through Backburner you can use unlimited computers... well as many as you can connect over your network.

My setup:
12 Towers - IBM - Windows Xp
1 - Tower - XI Computer - Windows XP
1 - Server - Windows 2000
Server - IBM - Windows Server 2003 - All my materials and licenses run on this tower, and all my files save to this tower.

I render really on 14 computers total! I use the windows 2000 server as part of my farm as my company abandoned that server for the other; it is now just a storage tower. I didn't count my XI station in my farm total cause it really isn't in the farm. I have rendered within Max from my tower with all 14 computers. Giving me a total of 32 Buckets.

I don't know with the way I'm setup, if it is different than other farms out there. But I have it in a nice order, and things seem to work smoothly. the only issue I run into is when I want to use RPC, usually I just do those in Scanline, work with it that way....Vray seems to take 10,000 years to render RPC's . But if you have any other questions, I can try to answer them as best I can.

[serge]

So is this only a problem when actually saving the individaual frames? What about sharing one image through DR between, say, 15 machines. Will 5 of them have a problem? Also, how about sharing resources. All our maps and files come off our central file server which is XP Pro. That would also be problematic, right?

Anyone have any experience with this?

Out sourcing through Backburner you can use unlimited computers... well as many as you can connect over your network.

My setup:
12 Towers - IBM - Windows Xp
1 - Tower - XI Computer - Windows XP
1 - Server - Windows 2000
Server - IBM - Windows Server 2003 - All my materials and licenses run on this tower, and all my files save to this tower.

I render really on 14 computers total! I use the windows 2000 server as part of my farm as my company abandoned that server for the other; it is now just a storage tower. I didn't count my XI station in my farm total cause it really isn't in the farm. I have rendered within Max from my tower with all 14 computers. Giving me a total of 32 Buckets.

I don't know with the way I'm setup, if it is different than other farms out there. But I have it in a nice order, and things seem to work smoothly. the only issue I run into is when I want to use RPC, usually I just do those in Scanline, work with it that way....Vray seems to take 10,000 years to render RPC's . But if you have any other questions, I can try to answer them as best I can.

32 Buckets= 8 xeons? (ht=4 buckets/machine)
how can you run more than 10 machines in dr ?

[Mathew Everett]

12 Towers - IBM - Windows Xp = Xeon 3.4Ghz = 24 Buckets
1 - Tower - XI Computer - Windows XP = Dual Xeon 3.4Ghz = 4 Buckets
1 - Server - Windows 2000 = Dual Xeon 3.2Ghz = 4 Buckets

I haven't done anything out of the ordinaray I just hit render. I do have 2 licenses...But that doesn't matter...or does it?