3dsmax-vray win server 2003 compatibility

[designerdisaster]

hi everybody,

 

my team (architects) wants to acquire a render farm to accept bigger project

 

i have a very good price at dell for 4 x poweredge 1950 (2 cpu xeon quad)

for a total of 32 nodes (4x2x4)

 

my question is:

 

can i install max9 and vray(with a standard licence) on this type of server who run win server 2003

if no,why? and what os is supported by apps(exept XP) and compatible with the hardware

 

thanks a lot for your replys

 

best regards

[thatch]

Max 9 and vray will run fine on windows server 2003, but max is not supported by autodesk to run on WS, so if you have any problems the support team may not be able to help, not sure about chaosgroups support.

[designerdisaster]

ok

 

first,thanks for your quick reply

 

if i have understood, max is not designed to run on this OS...?but it works...!

 

is it more bugy than XP installation?

have you concrete exemples/probs/success?

is it a professional solution ?

can i achieve very important jobs with that soft/os/hardware

 

it is mainly for stills pictures.--->distributed rendering

 

is it the right solution for us to crunch render-time?

 

it's very expensive, and no-return investment...

 

thanks

[thatch]

Weve been using it on out render farm for a while with no problems with animation or stills, never used it with distributed rendering but should think it would work fine. I spoke to autodesk directly when we moved to windows server and they told me many companies were using it on their render farms without compatability issues.

[designerdisaster]

ok thatch,

 

thanks for your councils, very helpfull for me to take the right decision

 

if you have other suggestion/idea for an alternative configuration,

 

i m very interested.

 

Best regards

 

 

PS: what is the most adapted release of win server 2003 to run max/vray

 

i know there are a lot of versions...???

[DavidR]

We have a renderfarm with Opteron 275, Max7 + Vray 1.47, Max9 + Vray 1.5, and Server 2003-64. It's run very well for over a year.

[designerdisaster]

well!

 

that's great !

 

davidr--> are you working with Distributed rendering? does vrayspawner works with your configuration?( particularly with vray 1.5)?

 

as i said we will use the cluster mainly for still pictures and i'm a bit angry about vrayspawner...

 

thanks

[DavidR]

well!

 

that's great !

 

davidr--> are you working with Distributed rendering? does vrayspawner works with your configuration?( particularly with vray 1.5)?

 

as i said we will use the cluster mainly for still pictures and i'm a bit angry about vrayspawner...

 

thanks

NO, we tested DR with 1.47 and it worked pretty well, but we don't really need DR because our images all render under 12 hours, and didn't test with 1.5. Also, we use Backburner, so we'd have to tell people to stay off of nodes 1-10, eg, while we do a DR. I guess we could do strips, but like I said, we don't really use it so I can't help -sorry.