How to remotely access my render farm?

[branskyj]

Hi all,

I have been doing some rendering away from home and was wondering if I can remotely access my render farm at home to share the workload. I have constant Internet access (fast speed) and use 3DS Max. If I start the render slaves before leaving, can I use them for rendering when I get to work?

Is that possible and how?

 

Cheers.

[notamondayfan]

Do you mean you want to use the processing power of another PC that isn't physically connected to your network? I guess it could be possible if your network was setup properly as all you need to do is transfer data to the render node.

 

If you mean how can you remotely control another PC, then I would recommend TeamViewer. It's dead easy to setup and use, and you can also remotely access PCs from Android or Iphone phones.

[Scott Schroeder]

I guess its possible, but the transfer of data may prove to be a bottleneck. More importantly, what's your upload speed at home? Many times, at least with the lousy Communist-Cast internet service I have, the download speeds are much faster than the upload speeds.

 

You just have to make sure your home systems have access to all of the drives and assets at your other place if you want to use them as a traditional render farm. For DR, it may be different. I'm not sure.

[branskyj]

Sorry for the long time silence guys. I just thought the thread was dead

I am about to try a software and will post the results.

Cheers.

[ferrarod]

Hey, sorry to bring this slightly old thread back up, but did you figure out a way to do this? I'm actually about to come up on a very similar situation and would like to do distributed rendering remotely. Host computer at my home office and client computers at a business office.

 

Anything you've found from your tests will be helpful...

 

Thanks...

[branskyj]

Sorry man,

I abandoned the idea soon after I posted the question on-line. I guess the slow upload speeds at the office made my decision easy.

Good luck to you and feel free to share any progress.

Julian.

[ferrarod]

Ah - too bad. Thanks for getting back to me. I'll let you know what I find out with this adventure...

[Fernando Lino]

setting up remotely is very simple, what you need is:

-Hamachi free to set up a virtual network, so every computer will have a new IP under this virtual network

-LogmeIn Free or Pro....I would go Pro to control and transfer data between computer

 

In vray under licenses you have to use the new IP from Hamachi

Transfer the files from work to home (using the same drive name) Mimic what you have at work

to evoid delays transfering the files via backburnerin my main MAX file I only have cameras and lights and xrefs so the file is very small.

when you send the rendering via backburner make sure that you are using the IP from Hamachi (the manager is one of your computers at home).

when the renderings are done, you could get access to the nodes at home via logmein and/or transfer the renderings to your computer at work.(It looks complicated but it is not)

 

Fernando

[ferrarod]

Thanks Fernando! That seems to be a good solution. I'll give this a shot...

 

Thanks again...

[branskyj]

Thanks from me too, Fernando. Will try it tonight.

[Fernando Lino]

you are welcome!!

if you go logmein pro, you only need one license, I would use the manager for that.

if go logmein free, it's a little more steps because you need to remotely control one computer at home and upload the renderings to a FTP or something similar, after that you have download them from there....I have logmein in my Iphone, so I can see what is going on when I'm out of my office

another good tool to control the farm is RefaMo, you can control them, see the status of memory, proccessors, disk, etc.... you can turn them off, and run batches, so if you need to turn off or on DR in vray, it can be done in one click all the computer at once.