Running DR as a system service or launched locally?

[DAVIS_CARTER_SCOTT]

My question is for all the render farm users out there that do not use 100% dedicated systems to DR render with.

I have 14 quad core Dell systems that I will use for DR at various times of the day. To utilize these systems easier I have registered the Vray spawner as a system service. This allows us to leave the systems powered on thus being available for DR anytime we need them without any user intervention.

The problem I have found is that in the slaved buckets the materials aren't being applied. I have found that if I do not run the spawner as a system service and launch it manually after logging into the slave machine the materials will apply just fine.

I would love to hear how some of you have setup DR slaves in your environments. Especially if you utilize slaves as part of your day to day work too.

Thanks in advance for any ideas you have,
Jim

[ruud3dv]

This sounds like an issue with userpermissions on the location of your maps.

The vray-spawner service by default uses Local Systemaccount, while the manually started spawner will use the logged on users-account.

You can change the logon-settings for the service under Services.

[instinct]

the systemaccount is not seeing networked files. set the service to start as the user you gave the permissions to see network files :



Regards,
Thorsten

[DrJan]

We haven't tested the DR properly yet, but we have used Backburner with 4 computers.
They're all workstations and we only use them at night, in the weekends or when the regular user isn't around.

What we did was create a login "Maxuser" and under XP configured all the systems equally. Added the VRaySpawner and the Backburner Server to the startup menu and because the accounts are the same on all PCs, all the paths are the same as well.
This in case a map is in the wrong location or we set the Save file to a folder on a local machine. Untill recently we had a crappy server that had the tendency to crash during weekends

We've also "optimized" XP for use with 3dsmax under those accounts: disabling unnecessary services, improving XP performance etc.

I still have to mess about with the DR settings a little though, because last time with an animation the other computers only helped out with the first frame and then stopped.

[DAVIS_CARTER_SCOTT]

The permissions defintely sounds like the culprit. I'll start some testing and post back what I find out.

It looks like your examples both indicate a local account on each slave needs to access the network files. Hopefully I'll be able to do this from the server instead of each machine....but time will tell.

Thanks for the insight.
Jim

[instinct]

well we use domain accounts. that works fine also. The problem is that the system account usually doesnt have permission. And by default the service is launched with the system account. So you have to tell the server locally on the DR machines that they should use a different account. Be it a local account with network access, or a domain account or whatever.

Regards,
Thorsten

[DAVIS_CARTER_SCOTT]

Thanks Thorsten. I am hoping to use a domain account too. For some reason I think I'm still missing something. I've set the VraySpawner90 service to run as a domain user named DCSDESIGN\RUSER and assiged the password for that user. I restarted the service and it is running as DCSDESIGN\RUSER. I even added this acocunt to the local Power Users group of the machine. Still no luck. I'll post a screen of my services window once I see if I can hotlink from a hosting site.

Any other ideas for me to look into?
Jim

[DAVIS_CARTER_SCOTT]

here's my screenshot

[instinct]

Are you sure that this account is given permission to see all the shares etc needed to render. And that the license server is set correctly (even tho DR doesnt need a license it still needs to see the licenseserver). Firewalls off etc ?

Regards,
Thorsten

[DAVIS_CARTER_SCOTT]

i'm pretty positive that we're ok with this account. i have tried to run the services as myself, and i'm a domain admin, without any luck.

i can logon locally to the machine and render with vray so i think it's covered. plus this user account is in the domain groups that a standard user would be in too.

yes, firewalls are off based on my domain policy too.

[DAVIS_CARTER_SCOTT]

I think it's resolved

I think I have it now. The ruser account is fine. I'm the problem. I hadn't saved the MAX test file with the repathed bitmap UNC locations. Now it seems to be doing what I need.

Thanks for all the help with these everyone.
Hopefully someday I can repay the favor.

Jim