Mixed OS Render Farm

[mikeyjm26]

Hi Guys,

 

I'm new to the render farm scene and was wondering if you can have a render farm running different OS's. Basically it would be 32-bit XP and 64-bit XP.

 

I have setup Backburner to handle the jobs but I am having difficulty getting it to work It sees the jobs but says it doesn;t have the plugin to handle to job even though there isn't one in that scene.

 

Any help would greatly appreciated.

 

TIA

 

Mikey

[Matt McDonald]

you can have a farm of mixed 32 bit and 64 bit servers. If you want to use all of your servers you will have to submit as 32bit (assuming that you have installed both Max 32 and 64 on your 64 bit servers) or submit half of the frames as a 32 bit job and the other half as 64.

 

For your other problem, are you running backburner server service or are you just running backburner server? If it is the service you have to have to run the service as a user with local admin rights. If you don't you will get missing plugin errors.

[BrianKitts]

if you are using max 2009 make sure your nodes have backburner 2008.1 otherwise backburner kicks on and doesn't load the 32/64bit plugins for max 2009.

 

I learned that one today. We have a mixed 32/64 bit farm and I couldn't get max to load on some of the machines. Removing backburner 2007.1.1 and installing 2008.1 solved the problem.

[mikeyjm26]

designmule,

 

backburner is running as a service and I have full admin rights to my machine. I didn't know about installing 32-bit on the 64-bit so I might try that as well. Although we do have a couple of machines that 32-bit installed and they displaying the plugin error as well.

 

Thanks

 

Mikey

Edited August 26, 2008 by mikeyjm26
Spelling

[mikeyjm26]

Brian, I will have a look at what backburner is installed and see if it makes a difference.

 

Thanks

 

Mikey

[Matt McDonald]

just because you have full admin rights does not mean that the backburner service does. Go into your services and find server service, select "login" and rather than local system enter a user name and password for an account with local admin rights.

[mikeyjm26]

just because you have full admin rights does not mean that the backburner service does. Go into your services and find server service, select "login" and rather than local system enter a user name and password for an account with local admin rights.

 

Done that but looking at the other servers in the Backburner Queue Monitor, it says that all the other servers are absent.

 

I have updated the backburner on one of the machines to same as mine and now it is displaying an error in monitor. Any further advice is greatly appreciated.

 

Mikey