Slow to start on slaves

It is taking forever to transfer my irradiance map to my slaves. My current scene is taking about 20 minutes, which means I don’t see a slave bucket until the irradiance map gets there. What could cause this? Or, is this normal?

some slaves are taking even longer. A couple joins after 20 minutes, but two others take 30 minutes.

You mean to transfer it or just to help start in the calculation of it?

once it is transfers, it starts pretty fast.

What is the size of the Irr.Map?
How many machines participate in the DR?
What is the speed of your network?
Is there any improvement if you are rendering with only 2 or 3 machines?
What type of Irr.Map you are using for Fly-Through animation (single file) or for Animation (multiple files)?
Which Vray version you are using?
Is the issue scene dependent? Have you tried to render another scene with similar setup?

3 of our render nodes always take a lot longer to start than the others - nothing like 20 minutes though. Its a pain though. The 3x slow machines are all the same 6 core i7 with 32GB. The ones that kick in immediately are all 4 core i7 machines.

That’s strange. Have you tried to disable Embree feature, or to run DR only on those machines?
By the way are we talking about the same case reported from Bobby Parker or it is a different story?

I would need to pre-calc the irmap to see if there is still a delay. We tend to use DR with a shared IRmap calculation.

I just to have that problem but in my case the reason was loading textures and files so my slaves have a local drive with all the maps and proxies or at least most of them… Inside my project folder a have a sub folder for custom textures for that project… They pick pretty quickly and I’m not often using pre-calculated Irmap or LCmap.

That’s my setup, too, but still slow.[quote=“flino2004, username:flino2004”]
I just to have that problem but in my case the reason was loading textures and files so my slaves have a local drive with all the maps and proxies or at least most of them… Inside my project folder a have a sub folder for custom textures for that project… They pick pretty quickly and I’m not often using pre-calculated Irmap or LCmap.
[/quote]

I assume this occurs only with specific scene? Could you try with different Irr map mode (precalculate and render)?
If you use Irr map Animation prepass mode, each render node need to load 5 .vrmap files (assuming Interp. frames is set to 2)

The issue seems to be related to the GI maps and their transfer, so few tests with different GI setup might be helpful to localize it.

Aslo as Svetlozar already mentioned above, it is important to specify :

What is the size of the Irr.Map?
What is the speed of your network?

My network speed
671.4683920 Mbps

This is from my main PC to my slaves.

Hi,

The speed seems to be OK.

What is the specification of the machine where all precalculated maps are stored?
Is there any limitations of inbound connections?
Did you try with less machines ?

what are you guys using to test network speed?

I have recently discovered that if you only have the specific servers you are doing DR on ticked in the DR ‘settings…’ box then it speeds up the start of the rendering process quite significantly. If there’s a bunch of DR servers in there ticked that aren’t on, or are otherwise busy, vray takes a while working through the list figuring out what servers are available and what aren’t.

I removed my oldest machine, which really never contributed much, and I think things are speeding up.[quote=“peterguthrie, post:10, topic:45408, username:peterguthrie”]
I have recently discovered that if you only have the specific servers you are doing DR on ticked in the DR ‘settings…’ box then it speeds up the start of the rendering process quite significantly. If there’s a bunch of DR servers in there ticked that aren’t on, or are otherwise busy, vray takes a while working through the list figuring out what servers are available and what aren’t.
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Thanks for the feedback.
What are the specs of the old machine and how much faster is the rendering without it?

RAM Total:
12 GB

Processors:
CPU Chip Count: 8
CPU Core Count: 8
CPU0: Intel(R) Pentium(R) III Xeon processor (1 core)
CPU1: Intel(R) Pentium(R) III Xeon processor (1 core)
CPU2: Intel(R) Pentium(R) III Xeon processor (1 core)
CPU3: Intel(R) Pentium(R) III Xeon processor (1 core)
CPU4: Intel(R) Pentium(R) III Xeon processor (1 core)
CPU5: Intel(R) Pentium(R) III Xeon processor (1 core)
CPU6: Intel(R) Pentium(R) III Xeon processor (1 core)
CPU7: Intel(R) Pentium(R) III Xeon processor (1 core)

Operating System Name:
Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP Professional x64 Edition

Service Pack:
Service Pack 2

I use LAN Speed Test (http://www.totusoft.com/) [quote=“sakana7, post:3, topic:45384, username:sakana7”]
what are you guys using to test network speed?
[/quote]

thanks bobby, i’ve been using the same software but getting 90 Mbps only, damn, something is up…