Rack mounted render node verus render farm... help needed

[Podge]

Hi all.

 

I'm looking for advice on weather to tell my manager to go ahead with purchasing a 2U rack mountable render node or invest in a render farm for our 6 members. Any experienced advice is most welcome...

 

Product Name: X2Ri-Twin²

 

Case: Xworks X2Ri-Twin² - 2U - Rack Chassis (1+1 Redundant 1200W PSU)

Mainboard: 4x Supermicro X8DTT Mainboard(s)

Graphics Card(s): Integrated Matrox G200eW Graphics

Hard Drive (1): Western Digital 160GB *RAID Edition* Serial-ATA II - 16MB Cache

Hard Drive (2): Western Digital 160GB *RAID Edition* Serial-ATA II - 16MB Cache

Hard Drive (3): Western Digital 160GB *RAID Edition* Serial-ATA II - 16MB Cache

Hard Drive (4): Western Digital 160GB *RAID Edition* Serial-ATA II - 16MB Cache

Optical Drive(s): No Optical Drive

Sound Card: No Integrated Audio

Network Card(s): 2x Intel® PRO/1000 Gigabit LAN [Per node - 8 Total]

Floppy Drive: No Floppy Drive

CPU(s): 4x Intel® Xeon® E5530 (4x 2.40GHz / 8MB Cache / 2x QPI [5.86GT/s]) [1x per Blade] ßßß 16 physical cores (OS & apps will see 32 cores)

Memory: 6GB 1333MHz DDR-3 ECC Registered (PC-10600) RAM [Per Blade] ßßß 24GB RAM Total

Mouse / Keyboard: No Keyboard or Mouse

Operating System(s): 4x Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition (64-bit)

Warranty: 3 Year(s) Hardware -Swap out- (Advanced replacement of faulty parts)

 

Price: £5,519 each

[3dp]

10 years ago i went with renderdrive

in the time i used it it was sensible as back then there was nothing to touch them for speed

1 4u box had the potenial to raytrace at speeds undreamed of back then it was the cost of several MR lics on p2 300hz proc and 1g ram - think of the constant upgrade costs - over the years i added more renderdrives and each time double speed etc - for me that worked

 

if i'm buying now i'll buy the node - it's small - maybe too small for the amount of kit in there i've got a 1 u server and i stopped using it as it was too damn noisy with the fans on

 

my experience is seperate boxes can/will have issues and drop out of network fail break and generally let you down when you really need them then again you'll be able to build ssome beige boxes with probably more horse power for less and shave on non critical components but you need space and networking

 

swings/arrows/apples/oranges

[moshenko]

Hi all.

 

I'm looking for advice on weather to tell my manager to go ahead with purchasing a 2U rack mountable render node or invest in a render farm for our 6 members. Any experienced advice is most welcome...

 

The system you've quoted *is* a render farm (albeit a small one), so I'm not sure what your alternate solution is. My advice for purchasing a farm is:

 

- Define a budget - without a budget you'll wallow around in system configuration hell wondering if you could get 2% more power for x more dollars/pounds;

- Purchase the fewest number of systems with the greatest amount of processing power that your budget will allow - fewer systems means less ongoing maintenance, fewer licenses and less overall headaches. Don't get sucked into thinking that 100 cheap boxes will be better than 10 expensive ones. You may get slightly more processing power but you will be overcome with maintenance and configuration issues;

- Purchase systems with great hardware support - with fewer systems you will want to know that if something goes wrong it will be fixed right away;

- Get the right system for your operating environment - rackmount units are LOUD and are intended to be in enclosed rooms with separate air conditioning units. If sound is an issue it would be best to look at quiet workstation systems (I have some Dells that are virtually silent) and configure them for processing/RAM only;

- Don't consider proprietary hardware solutions unless a) you already use them/are familiar with them, or b) you are ready to reinvent your workflow and commit to a long-term, single-use investment. With a standard farm you can always switch software and be ready to go, but with a proprietary system (a la RenderDrive) you are stuck.

 

The quote you listed only includes a single Xeon processor per node. You should have it re-quoted with the extra processor to really be able to decide if it's economical (it seems silly to order a system like that with half the available processing power).

 

Good luck -

[ihabkal]

and get an optical drive (to install your software ) and 8GB ram minimum.