Render Farm for $35k

[Anonymous]

Advice needed,

I have been given the arduous task of finding a network rendering solution for about $35k

We have the following apps/platforms/users:-
Maya 7 Unlimited / WXP x 1
Softimage XSI / WXP x 1
Combustion 4 / WXP x 1
Adobe After Effects / OSX x 4

I have space for 6 x 1U servers and was hoping to find a solution where I would have 1 server controlling the rendering and 5 nodes rendering. I would prefer it if I could move away from Windows due to our IT’s stringent controls on everything Windows (but it’s not a problem), for some reason if it’s Mac they just ignore us! Linux is also an option but we don’t have any experience of any Linux platform, but again that’s not too much of a problem.

I have no experience of render farms etc so any advise would be more than welcome.

Thanks

[uwe_wiesemann]

Hi, that’s not a bad amount of money. you should be able to get something for it.
What about moving the 4 AfterEffects seats to windows as well and stick with windows?
I dont like windows too much myself but since you already have the other apps plus your IT ignoring the apples….
regards

[Anonymous]

uwe_wiesemann wrote:

What about moving the 4 AfterEffects seats to windows as well and stick with windows?

The macs that have AfterEffects on also have loads of other software so the cost of new workstaions and software would kill my budget, also the Operators would probably leave if they had WXP!

I have been looking at http://www.artvps.com/products.ihtml?page=rdriveoverview

what do you think?

[Anonymous]

NO!!! No renderdrive!

There’s a discussion (that became an argument) about it over on cgtalk.com – you can read more about it there.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=289082&highlight=RenderDrive

Seriously, though, if you have $35k to spend on a render farm, you could get 8 Boxx dual proc/dual core AMD Opteron render nodes with 4 gigs of RAM each, a 120 gig hd, and XP64. Or you could get an Appro cluster system.

I’d say if you have space for 6 – 1u render nodes, you should look into a blade system.

[Anonymous]

Looking at 6 x 1U servers running Linux on 2 x Opteron procs, if they don’t get used too much I can then use the servers for other things.

Ta

[eltopo]

Hmm I don’t know if you could use Mac since there is no Softimage for the platform, unless you render in renderman or something similar.

About the Mac, well they are cheaper although I would wait, in case they release their server with the multicore powerpc 970.

And if I was one of your operator I would leave if you traded my mac for a pc

😀

[patdawg]

eltopo wrote:

And if I was one of your operator I would leave if you traded my mac for a pc

😀

Gotta love the elitism of the Mac camp. Don’t really get it. Can’t even play Doom III on one of those cute little aluminum boxes.

[Anonymous]

Im not completly sure about this but I think AE can use a windows farm when your workstations are macs. But that might be wrong. And there is always the problem of plug-ins wich most of the good ones will need more licenses for the farm. Good luck.

md

[-k]

eltopo wrote:

And if I was one of your operator I would leave if you traded my mac for a pc

😀

No offense, but as your boss I’d feel like this is no big loss. Honestly, if someone refuses to do a job on a pc…

-k

[Anonymous]

-k wrote:

eltopo wrote:

And if I was one of your operator I would leave if you traded my mac for a pc

😀

No offense, but as your boss I’d feel like this is no big loss. Honestly, if someone refuses to do a job on a pc…

-k

I agree, but you know what some of these creative people are like!

I’m one of them………….

Anyway

I’m looking at some render software http://seriss.com/rush/ to work on some Linux boxes. Looks like it will work with all our apps and both Mac and Windows.

Also on a side note we have just acquired an old Flame v7 and looking to upgrade it to Linux or Tezro and v8. Am I right in thinking that there is some network rendering software that will work with this version? If so do you think I should pre plan the possibility of using a couple of nodes for this? Will an extra couple of network boxes make any difference?

[Anonymous]

Yes, there is network rendering for Flame. It is called burn, and you can only get it from Autodesk. And, it will only work with other discreet systems. The flame will be much faster than all your other workstations. So I would suggest just leaving it by itself and spending all your money on the desktop apps render farm.

md

[Anonymous]

mdoane wrote:

Yes, there is network rendering for Flame. It is called burn, and you can only get it from Autodesk. And, it will only work with other discreet systems. The flame will be much faster than all your other workstations. So I would suggest just leaving it by itself and spending all your money on the desktop apps render farm.

md

I see what your getting at, I think I might just leave the Flame for now until I have had a few months playing with it! My main priority is the desktop stuff.

thanks

[higginba_vb]

we have a windows-based setup using rush with maya and AE that’s absolutely amazing! whichever OS you decide to put on your blades, i would also strongly reccommend getting some sort of central server (with a nice, fast RAID on it) and forcing everyone to work off of that. you lose a bit of interactive speed when scrubbing clips etc, but then the workstations and render nodes are all looking at the same stuff on the same paths, so you don’t have to muck about with “collecting footage” etc. we have completely abandoned our flames as design tools because the AE + farm setup is so. much. better.

you will save yourself a lot of hassle, and get a lot more horsepower out of your money if you switch everybody over to one platform. you could almost get away with building a windows renderfarm and having everyone render on that, but i suspect you’re going to run into all sorts of fun problems with the mac AE boxen using mac fonts/plugins/etc that the windows render nodes can’t understand. so either get the 3d guys to both switch to maya on the mac, or make the AE guys move to pc. your administration will be easier, and you’ll save a lot of money on extraneous software. FWIW, it takes waaaaay longer to realearn an application (esp a 3d app – Maya has 8 manuals!) than it does an OS, so I’d make the mac guys switch, but I have a well-known long-standing bias against prima donna you-can-pry-my-mac-from-my-cold-dead-fingers asshole artists. 😀

so to sum up:
-get a central server with >= 1TB of RAID storage and some good GigE networking equipment
-pick one OS and support that on the farm, either with mac or windows rackmounts

good luck! watching my renders get cranked by a renderfarm for the first time was one of the happiest moments of my career, and now i can’t imagine life without it!

[Anonymous]

higginba wrote:

you will save yourself a lot of hassle, and get a lot more horsepower out of your money if you switch everybody over to one platform. you could almost get away with building a windows renderfarm and having everyone render on that, but i suspect you’re going to run into all sorts of fun problems with the mac AE boxen using mac fonts/plugins/etc that the windows render nodes can’t understand.

Is rush not platform independent?

Can I not have a windows or linux farm and send jobs to it from Mac / Windows?

[higginba_vb]

rush is indeed platform independent. you can use it to send jobs to any machine that can run it. it’s just a question of how you spend your money… you could buy 6 render machines and put a menagerie of different OS’es on them, but i’d rather have all 6 machines available to all the artists at once. there will be times when the ae guys are busy and the 3d guys are slow (and vice versa.) with one OS on the render machines, they can be rendering as much as possible instead of just sitting there b/c they’re running linux and you’re in the middle of a big AE job (which doesn’t run on linux!)

it’s not rush you have to watch out for. it’s not being able to render an AE project that the mac designer used a mac postscript font on because your farm is on windows. or because you have the PC version of magic bullet but no version of it on your all-mac farm. is this making any sense?

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