Cloning Disk across render nodes

[Jonathan Sanchez]

Hey Guys

So this weekend I get all my parts to put together my nodes for my home based render farm. I've been looking up how to clone disks from one node to the other w/out having to manually reinstall win7 and 3ds max and vray and updates and all that stuff one by one but I must admit I'm a little confused, particularly when it comes to computer names, windows / 3ds / Vray registrations. Can anyone that has done it explain to me the process, what program they used for cloning disk to disk on render nodes (identical hardware from node to node)

Edited February 24, 2011 by sancheuz

[cupsster]

Start: assuming that all nodes share same HW config...

 

google for "pq magic" or "ghost image" (not scary one :] )

1.make fresh OS install with drivers on first node

2.install all soft required - do not register, neither windows

3.make "ghost image" of that node

4.copy over nodes

5.boot up

6.boring part - register all

7.back up that image

 

TIP: when copying partition also make "ghost"/invisible one on node hard disk.. this will save you time later when you need to reinstall fresh for speed [quick process from ghost already on disk]

[BrianKitts]

we ran into an issue when we cloned our rendernodes that when you first launched backburner, even though I changed the names of each nodes, they would over write themselves in the manager and the monitor and you could never get them all online. You had to go deep into the program files directory and delete one of the .ini files so that it would rewrite that file with it's own individual MAC address.

 

....... I'm trying to find the thread on the AREA where someone helped me solve the problem..... but I can't seem to find it, be a good thing to figure out now since I'm getting 10 new blades in a couple weeks and don't want to go through that again.....

[Jeff Mottle]

You had to go deep into the program files directory and delete one of the .ini files so that it would rewrite that file with it's own individual MAC address.

 

How long ago was this. Most new mirror/ghost apps resolve this issue on their own. BTW, Acronis True Image is a really good mirror app.

[BrianKitts]

How long ago was this. Most new mirror/ghost apps resolve this issue on their own. BTW, Acronis True Image is a really good mirror app.

 

three years ago.

 

Not sure what our IT guys are running with today..... I re-imaged my HD a little over year ago when I moved to San Francisco rather than having to do a hardware transfer and we used Norton Ghost, so that's my best guess of what it was done with.

[Jonathan Sanchez]

Hey guys.. figured it was just 4 systems I was programming so just did the setup manually. See image below for my setup. Rack I made myself out of 2x2s. Each node contains an i7 2600 and 8gb DDR 3. I got 2 battery backups each taking care of a pair of systems. I'm running 44 buckets with my 6 machines, 1 not showing on the image (5 quad core w/ht - 1 quad w/out hyper threading) Prelim Tests: a low quality image that would take me 15 mins before I'm rendering in about just over 2 mins. These units couldn't have came at a better time as I face a tight deadline this week where I'll have to render out various images.

Edited February 28, 2011 by sancheuz