More Render Nodes

[Matt Sugden]

At the moment I have a network of render 6 PCs, a workstation, a laptop and NAS drive. And it all seems to work ok as I havn't hit my limit on my number of connections to XP pro, however, if I was to get some more render PCs I assume I would need to start getting into having a didcated network server and server software etc?

 

Is this the case? if so what would be my next step?

 

thanks

[Vixerunt]

Well you could try to get Windows 2003. Which is a server version. There you will not have such limits.

It should be pretty cheap now as it is not the newest server OS.

 

If you get a server machine you should build the storage into it instead of the NAS. If the NAS is not one of the expensive ones you will get quite a nice performance boost, because the network connection will be a lot faster.

The cpu in NAS drives is often to slow to allow full speed.

[Matt Sugden]

forgive my ignorance, but should I have Windows Server 2003 on every render PC or do I have one PC with windows server and a big old hard disc which acts as the master?

[neil poppleton]

One server with the one server software then you can link in more than 10pcs on the network.

Each pc has the usual o.s.

Use the server for storage and network manager, etc

[Matt Sugden]

so, from what I understand there arn't huge demands placed on servers from a cpu point of view, they are merely there to allocate ip address etc.?

 

with that in mind would a pc such as this http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Dell-PowerEdge-750-RackMounted-Server-windows-2000-serv_W0QQitemZ130373139108QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Computing_Networking_SM?hash=item1e5ad83aa4

 

be a reasonable purchase or is it best to run something more current?