We only have one node, though, directly connected to the server that houses the scene, textures and GI solutions.
Maybe a problem with dumping the previous frame's information? I really don't know enough about BB + V-Ray to know if an IMap, LCache and textures stay in memory for the whole sequence, or get loaded/unloaded after every frame. I looked at the task manager while it rendered, the node was using 5/32GB of RAM, so I can't imagine it was needing to load/unload geometry or maps.
I just checked Monitor and everything rendered, eventually. Had the same random ballooning of render times for the second camera path, but only every 5th or 6th frame or so.
Frames look good, for draft quality. I appreciate the input guys.