render farm meet file server

[Lincoln Brown]

hi there. i've got two big deadlines converging along with some recent hardware changes, and the result is not pretty. having tried everything within my limited networking knowledge, I hope someone out there might have some better ideas!

 

first, the setup: i have a speedy dual xeon workstation where i work, and set it to render when i'm not. then there are 5 p4 render nodes, each with 1-2gb of ram. finally, and this is my recent addition, i have a dedicated file server where all project files are located on a raid 10 drive setup. a separate non-raid drive collects the output. the network is gigabit, and its a simple xp peer-peer.

 

and here's the problem: as i am working on files in max, autocad, or photoshop, occasionally the software will hang, typically when going to save. when this happens the workstation and all the render nodes lose connection to the server (i'm using mapped drives now, though was using all UNC in max with the same problem). i need to restart the server to get the connection back. there are plenty of spontaneous failures amongst the nodes as well, where they get TIFFOpen failures.

 

i presume the problem lies with the server... but i'm at a loss what to do. its an HP Proliant ML150 SATA, and i know this is not "supposed" to run xp, and maybe thats the problem??? the nic drivers are for win2003 i think, but they seem to work fine for the most part.

 

or is it just too much to ask a peer to peer network to be rendering on 5-6 machines?

 

thanks in advance!

[Horhe]

So the workstation hangs up when you are working in max or under photoshop and not during rendering? If so the problem may lie in your hard drive and/or windows.

 

I have a dual xeon w/s, and I get errors from time to time with photoshop and max aswell.

Amazingly there are a lot of people who just dont run defragmentation on their hard drives - or dont run them as many times as they should. Yes it takes a while and its not interesting to sit and look at it maybe in the future windows will implement a platform game where you can blast your way through while waiting for your files to sort.

 

Another thing - if your hard drive is packed so much that you hardly got space to install tetris then i recomend deleting your old 3ds application backup files and leaving the rencent 3 (dont know about you but i work on max and after a project is completed i end up with lots of backup files taking up lots and lots of space - thank god the program stability is constantly updated and taken into account with every new version that comes out - or so they say cause i hardly notice that ).

 

If youre using Windows system (another chair broken) then ill share some value information with you. I read somewhere that windows is incompatible with 3dsmax, and it destroys the installed application by altering its files and making new ones making max choke. Anyway when it comes to windows - reinstaling it AT LEAST once a year will make the system work better. Either that or remove it, and write a letter to microsoft to make them aware that they have one less customer. Curse the day this evil feindish software emerged from the dark into our world!

 

If you are rendering and using photoshop at the same time then dont - 3d aps are real mongers when it comes to resources (i know max is for sure), decide what, when and..... er... when.

 

keep posting, im curious if youll solve this and wheater im right

 

cheers

[Horhe]

So the workstation hangs up when you are working in max or under photoshop and not during rendering? If so the problem may lie in your hard drive and/or windows.

 

I have a dual xeon w/s, and I get errors from time to time with photoshop and max aswell.

Amazingly there are a lot of people who just dont run defragmentation on their hard drives - or dont run them as many times as they should. Yes it takes a while and its not interesting to sit and look at it maybe in the future windows will implement a platform game where you can blast your way through while waiting for your files to sort.

 

Another thing - if your hard drive is packed so much that you hardly got space to install tetris then i recomend deleting your old 3ds application backup files and leaving the rencent 3 (dont know about you but i work on max and after a project is completed i end up with lots of backup files taking up lots and lots of space - thank god the program stability is constantly updated and taken into account with every new version that comes out - or so they say cause i hardly notice that ).

 

If youre using Windows system (another chair broken) then ill share some value information with you. I read somewhere that windows is incompatible with 3dsmax, and it destroys the installed application by altering its files and making new ones making max choke. Anyway when it comes to windows - reinstaling it AT LEAST once a year will make the system work better. Either that or remove it, and write a letter to microsoft to make them aware that they have one less customer. Curse the day this evil feindish software emerged from the dark into our world!

 

If you are rendering and using photoshop at the same time then dont - 3d aps are real mongers when it comes to resources (i know max is for sure), decide what, when and..... er... when.

 

keep posting, im curious if youll solve this and wheater im right

 

cheers

[Horhe]

sorry for the double post, not my fault something jammed up my cpu

[Lincoln Brown]

The problem does seem to lie with the drives, but since they are new, I just set them up in a raid array, they can't be needing defragmentation. I do have nearly all my projects of the past few years on there, maybe its time to move some off. The array is 300gb and is filled with 200gb (47,000 files) of projects and another 10gb (14,000 files) of bitmaps and such.

 

I made it a "dynamic" drive, with a 250gb volume (projects) and a 50gb volume (maps). Could this be an issue? its hardware raid so really there was no need to make it dynamic.

 

Everything WinXp Pro... will explore linux someday when there's "time". ha ha!