Advice on making a renderfarm from office computers

[Aaron2004]

Hello,

 

I work in an office of about 30 computers...all different speeds...but all just begging to be used for rendering.

 

I currently use backburner and VRAY DR (but not at the same time). Does anybody have any experience or better software advice to render on people's computer after they are idle for some time? I realize that everybody can turn on their BB Server or their VRAY spawner during lunch or at night, but I can't do that for 2 reasons:

 

1) I don't need it every night, so no use getting them into the habit

2) The accountants in the office shouldn't have to worry about my rendering habits.

 

I can recall at college that once our computers went idle for 5 minutes in the lab, they would kick in for rendering, but it was stealth with no pop-ups or anything.

 

Any advice?

 

Aaron

[gfa2]

Set Backburner and DR to run as a Windows service. That way they are always available and it doesn't require any user intervention. You can actually even use the computers when they aren't even logged in...great for overnight renders.

[Aaron2004]

Mmm...but when I did the DR as a service, it still took up a bunch of RAM while idle. Was I doing something wrong?

 

AND...If I send it rendering at 10:00, it will render on everyone's computer. No matter if they are on it at the time or not. It also doesn't stop once they get back.

 

Is this just a pipe dream, or is there really software out there that will allow you to do this?

 

Aaron

[gfa2]

Yeah, the DR service does that, the backburner doesn't though. I've been meaning to see if anyone else on the Chaos forum has said anything about the DR service and the RAM useage when idle.

[BrianKitts]

We've been trying to work on scripting that when someone logs off of their computer the script will startup backburner in the background as a service. But because of the way that our network is setup, when the machine isn't logged in it doesn't get the network permissions to access the servers, so it's starting backburner but errors on render cause it can't pull files.

 

Our IT guy who was working on it hasn't worked on it a while, so it's still not figured out yet.... but what you're after isn't unreasonable is what I'm trying to say....

[ktm07]

The firm that I worked at previously (Cooper Carry) had it set up as follows:

 

1. Backburner was set up to run as a service.
   
2. When the user logged on to the computer the service was logged off via a log-in script.
   
3. When the user logged out a log-off script restarted the backburner service.

We ran this solution for over a year on a farm of more than 100 dual core boxes. This worked about 95% of the time. But on occasion the scripts did not work properly making the computer nearly unusable. We were in the process of investigating some third party solutions when I left (Axceleon and Butterfly net render) both solutions had there merits. I am not sure what they ended up going with though. Parker1 is still there and I am sure he could offer some insight.

 

Tom

[Thablanch]

You can use a script that sets max to low priority on max startup.

Either DR or Backburner, so your co-workers do not even know that you are using their machines.

 

On the slave machines

Create a .ms called serverpriority.ms

paste this line in:

if (isnetserver()) do sysinfo.maxpriority = #low

put it in: VIZ or MAX\Scripts\Startup

 

The service(s) is not user based, it is machine based, so ( if you are following the help files for installation) the service (exemple: render) is always logged on the network and ready to process a job.

You just need the proper account to be created on the network.

 

In your BB monitor, you can set a computer to accept jobs in between such hours of the day, so even if the service is running full time on the machines, does not mean that it can take the job during daytime, lest say.

(right-click the machine in the BB moniotor lower tab, pick week schedule)

 

Runing them as a service is really nice, no need to bug people, and some of them really do not need to know....

[Aaron2004]

Alain,

 

Running those low priorities...can they be on their computer doing their normal business WHILE something is rendering then and they are none the wiser? We are talking 4-5 year old computers here.

 

Also...how much of a hit does this have on the power of the renderer?

 

Aaron

[Thablanch]

Works fine here on P4 2.2G, that are about 3-1/2 or 4 years old.

(When the application starts, there could be a little bit of a lag on the slave machines, but while processing 'normal scenes', it is ok)

 

Of course, i'm not using them when not really needed, for normal workflow, it is going to be BB overnight.

 

For the power of the renderer, well, if the computer is doing nothing else, your speed is going to be the same, it is the only process going on. The reason that it is low priority, is when they come back from lunch, exemple, and they are moving their mouse, their process are taking over, and your 3dsMax job is getting the leftovers of what the machine is able to give.

 

Of course, all of your machine should have the 3GB switch installed.

[Aaron2004]

MMmm..Intriguing. It sounds like a good Friday afternoon experiment.

 

Thanks for the advice.

 

So people can be logged out of the computer and it still works? Is it possible to stop an individual node?

 

Aaron

[Thablanch]

You are the one in controll of the BB monitor, so you can remove a job from a node. With the schedule thing, you can tell it not to render all the time, so even if the service on the machine is on, it will not take any jobs

 

If it is DR, well, when you stop a job, the slave VraySpawner stops as well

[Aaron2004]

Has anybody gotten DR to work with Backburner? I can't get it to work..even with the final 1.5