Need help with Licensing (Spec'ing New Company Hardware/Software)

[thickly]

Until now I have being doing archviz as freelance sidework running 3ds Max/Mental Ray/Maxwell/ACAD on a single custom built workstation. I just took a full-time design position and have been asked to spec out my hardware/software requirements and was hoping for a little direction since i have never done this before.

 

I have been approved for (2) machines - essentially one dedicated for rendering and the other for my everyday work. I have been working on one machine already and its more than fine for my everyday work (Core i7, 12gRAM, Quadro 600). For the second I was thinking of probably the mid-range workstation upgraded with a 6-core processor. My ideal set-up would be to have these two machines controlled with a KVM and all my files on the network. That way I can work on a 3d scene on either machine - and then just run it on the faster machine

Q: If I do this do I need to buy separate licenses of all the software?

 

For some reason I can't get my head around the software licensing issue and was hoping someone could provide a little direction. My budget won't be unlimited and I would rather spend the money on getting the best performing hardware rather than on licenses that will essentially not be used half the time.

 

Thanks in advance for your help.

Sean

[luthias42]

the short answer is yes you'll need a separate license for both machines. There are 2 ways to get around this, (at least for the autodesk programs). If you have a network license and are willing to only have the program running on one machine at a time you can go that route, or you can install max on both machines complete with pluggins, license it on one machine and leave the other machine on BackBurner. After 30 days Max will tell you that your trail has expired but will continue to render through BB. So if you can work on one machine and use the second one only as a render farm you can get a way with only one license.

 

Hope this helps and good luck

[AJLynn]

If you have one Max license and it's not a network license you need to choose one computer to run it on as your workstation, then have the other as a render node (you can do extra render node installs with only one license).

 

BTW, if you mean the 3DATSTech Midrange, to make that a 6-core you're going to need to choose the CPU and the RAM and motherboard from the High End. The Intel 6-cores need the socket 1366 motherboard, and that wants memory in multiples of 3.