Who is best to build a render blade in Australia?

[Derek Entesano]

Calling all Australians, where do you get your render machines spec'd up and built? This is fairly urgent as there is a board meeting tonight and I want to get something in front of them to consider. I am thinking more along the lines of a render blade server. Suggestions?

[dmardan]

Hey Chops,

 

First off, can I ask what size farm you are planning and what kind of per-existing infrastructure (if any) do you currently have in place?

 

I have done a fair bit of research into various solutions including blades for our renderfarm in recent time. We talked with Dell and HP mainly in regards to setting up a blade system but after a bit of research, we ended up going with a custom built setup using standard desktop based hardware which we have had phenomenal results with. We found the cost to processing power to be far far grater then that of a blade setup, although problems like space can become a problem.

 

Damian.

[pygoh]

Hp

[Derek Entesano]

Hey Chops,

 

First off, can I ask what size farm you are planning and what kind of per-existing infrastructure (if any) do you currently have in place?

 

I have done a fair bit of research into various solutions including blades for our renderfarm in recent time. We talked with Dell and HP mainly in regards to setting up a blade system but after a bit of research, we ended up going with a custom built setup using standard desktop based hardware which we have had phenomenal results with. We found the cost to processing power to be far far grater then that of a blade setup, although problems like space can become a problem.

 

Damian.

 

Thanks Damian. We do have a pretty good server room with lots of free rack storage so I was heading along those lines just for the advantages of have a dust free and cool area for the computers. I am in an architectural firm of about 70 staff with four of us doing arch vis full time.

 

We would want to start the farm with the equivalent of 4 of our machines (dual quadcore xeons) that we could farm our images out to. 4 workstations would start to get a bit bulky and if we want to add another 10 or so then it would become unworkable. You are right though there seems to be quite a price difference. Why is it so?

 

The other issue is if others see full computers just sitting around that are more powerful than theirs they might try and comandeer them!

[John.RenderStream]

Greetings, we (RenderStream) offer our products worldwide and supply in country warranty service. If you are unsure of how many blades you need we offer a benchmark test that combined with information about what your typical work render time is and what you want to accomplish we will supply you with a set of solutions. Please go to our website check out examples of our products and read our blogs.