Backburner Network Problem

[John Peck]

Hi,

 

Can someone please give me some advice on a backburner problem

 

I am just in the process of setting up a render server on our network.

We are a small design firm with 4 of us using 3dmax, our work speed was very slow always waiting for renders so we have just invested in 4 new PCs solely for use as a render farm. They are all quad cores with 4gb of ram, so now we have 8 PCs we can use at night to render movies etc.

 

We have them connected on a wired network to a standard external harddrive on a networt and all connecting to backburner fine.

 

But on rendering a movie using a HDRI file all but one PC failed out of 8.

 

I Have a feeling that they struggled to open HDRI or all write to a external harddrive that I have mapped onto each PC......

 

as some have come up with error finding folder that they render to and some have come up with Vray problems loading HDRI file??????

 

 

can someone please help where I am going wrong?

 

cheers

[SandmanNinja]

I have a feeling that the external HD is gonna slow you down bigtime...

 

I'm a bit confused - is the external HD on the SERVER, or on each WORKSTATION?

What is the purpose of the external HD?

Even with USB2 or firewire, it'll be slower than sitting inside the server.

[John Peck]

ok, yeah we are so small we dont have a server as such.

 

the External harddrive is just plugged into the router

this is the one we have:

 

all the PCs are directly plugged into the router via a 16way Gigabit switch.

 

 

so are what you are saying is the harddrive in a PC will be faster or can it buffer the files better?

[SandmanNinja]

Instead of the stored data sitting on the MotherBoard bus, it's sitting on a network port.

 

Here are some raw numbers for comparison:

Throughput

Raid: 300,000 MegaBYTES/Second (2,400,000 MegaBITS/Second, since there are 8 bits to a byte)

USB 2.0: 400 MegaBITS/Second

FireWire: 400 MegaBITS/Second

Ethernet: 10/100/1000 MegaBITS/Second (specs per Gigabit Ethernet standard: 13,812 KiloBITS/Second @ 10ms latency)

I'd pop a few bucks for a server and a nice router and some CAT 5E/6 cable, otherwise you're going to have a bottleneck because of your i/o

[John Peck]

Thanks for advice, maybe we need to run a server cos I think it looks to me as though the network port like you said is getting bogged down and cant handle all the PCs accessing it at once??? is this right?

 

as I have 4 new quad core PCs is it easy to make one of those into a server?....if i can... is it best to upgrade anything? ie the harddrive?...

 

cheers

[SandmanNinja]

A good CAD/3D workstation can run as a server in your environment.

The key things that make a good 3D computer makes a good server:

nice motherboard, fast bus, ram, RAID HD controller (optional, but nice).

 

Next would be HOW they all talk to each other, and that's where the router comes in.

So, get a nice router that's designed for high-speed switching/routing and then don't skimp on the cables. I wouldn't make the cables horribly long either.

 

I got my Microsoft Certification under NT3.51 and NT4, but any decent SERVER OS will do.

 

I'm a huge fan of client/server architecture, but I guess peer-to-peer would work, too.

 

Glad I could offer some techie advice.

[Lester_Masterson]

Whoa whoa whoa.

 

Are you trying to render to an AVI or Quicktime? 'Cause that might be your problem.

 

Rendering straight to movies uses only one machine (to the best of my knowledge)

 

Render out as TGA, or PNG, then assemble the stills after the fact. All machines should get use, and blast through your animation.

[Matt McDonald]

are you running the server service or the server app? if it is the server service you can have troubles if a.) this servis isn't running as a local admin and/or b.) you are using mapped drives as opposed to UNC paths.

[John Peck]

I actually got it working last night, it was to do with the HDRI map not linking correctly. Bit weird though........

 

as the company is so new most of the maps were linked to my portable harddrive and when I started the scene I added the new locations on the shared drive.

 

For all the maps it worked fine on backburner but for some reason cos the HDRI was in the Vray enviroment it needed it updated to the exact location..... even though on my PC it rendered it fine?...

 

when i done this it all worked!..... so hopefully we dont need a server but maybe when we get this job out we can sort one out....

 

cheers for help