Sleeping/waking render farm computers

[jackbird]

Thanks in large part to the helpful people on this forum, I now have a 7-node render farm in my basement. When I'm not using them, I put them to sleep.

 

Doing this one machine at a time (both sleeping and waking up) is time-consuming - are there utilities or a Powershell script out there to put a bunch of computers to sleep and wake them up at once?

[Matt McDonald]

I use MC-WOL with a batch file to wake machines. I do it one at a time but you might be able to set it up to wake multiple machines.

 

http://www.matcode.com/wol.htm

[numerobis]

...I now have a 7-node render farm in my basement. When I'm not using them, I put them to sleep.

 

i have almost the same setup here with 8 nodes in the basement. Currently i'm using a simple wake on lan tool ( http://masterbootrecord.de/files/wakeup.zip ) with a link to a batch file for every node on my desktop. So it's 8 double clicks at the moment

I'm looking into building a one button solution atm. This is what i have found so far - but not tested http://blogs.technet.com/b/matthts/archive/2012/06/02/wakeup-machines-a-powershell-script-for-wake-on-lan.aspx

I'm not sure how to implement wait states because i don't want to start all machines at once...

[jackbird]

Waking them up isn't really onerous - it's putting them to sleep. Do you have anything for that that's better than using RDP to each desktop and doing a little dance?

[numerobis]

I'm using Remote Desktop Connection Manager to connect to all nodes at once http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=21101

I like to see whats going on with them and have the direct control

 

But i think you could use PSshutdown - i haven't tried it myself, but it's on my list...

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897541.aspx

[Tommy L]

Waking them up isn't really onerous - it's putting them to sleep. Do you have anything for that that's better than using RDP to each desktop and doing a little dance?

 

Make sure they are all plugged into the same power strip and just flip the switch to 'off'. Make sure the power button is in a easy to reach place and you are all set

[Lincoln Brown]

There is an easy way! For shutdown, I have a simple batch file on my workstation's desktop. a double click shuts down 11 servers.

 

shutdown /s /f /m \\10.1.10.29

shutdown /s /f /m \\10.1.10.30

shutdown /s /f /m \\10.1.10.31

pause

 

 

i add the pause so the command window stays up and I can see if any didn't respond, but it isn't necessary

add a line for each computer and save it as "shutdown.bat"

 

for booting, I use a simple WOL program: http://www.profshutdown.com/download.aspx

just select which computers you want on and click the wake up button

[notamondayfan]

http://arddigital.co.uk/auto-shutdown-pc-after-rendering-with-backburner/

 

This might be useful, it combines a bat file, similar to the above code, but it's activated once all render jobs are complete so it automatically runs the shutdown script.

 

Dean

[Devin Johnston]

I've been using this program for years, it's great.

 

http://www.refamo.com/

[Matt McDonald]

Devin

 

How big is your farm? I kind of think I remember that you have a very large farm (not a stalker, just someone here...I thought you described a setup I have modeled our farm after).

 

Those third part managers look great and if you've got a farm of 7 nodes like the OP they seem to be a great solution. We have max installed on 90 computers, only rendering on a few each day as people travel. The third part managers all get really expensive when you have to pay for each node.

[Devin Johnston]

Well I'm not using it on the whole farm just the 10 render nodes I use for distributed rendering. For the rest of the farm (100 machines) I use Deadline which has a wake on LAN feature. You could use REFAMO on the whole farm though, it's cheaper than Deadline.