Recommendations / Configuartions for Tower Server for Arch Viz Tasks

[David Turner]

Does anyone have any recommendations for a tower server and recommended specifications for such hardware for use with architectural visualization?

Thanks.

-DT

[RyderSK]

What is it that you're after ?

 

"Tower" server only refers to case format, as opposed to Rack server. And server simply describes the use as opposed to workstation.

 

Everything else depends on the dedicated use, which can be simple website hosting, through file server to computing power house (intended for CPU or GPU rendering). Can be bough and configured premade from reputable brands (HP, DELL,etc..) or simply custom made like anything else without any trouble at all.

 

It's too broad question at the moment.

[Dimitris Tolios]

Most important question to ask (yourself) and include in any hardware suggestion request is "how much am I willing to spend".

You can be a "CG Architect" with a $400 laptop, and actually produce great results.

 

Since there are countless of options in building a modern PC, you should frame the question with at least a few basic premises:

 

• What do I want to do with it
  
• How much am I willing to spend (and how elastic your budget is)
  
• How big / small / portable / expandable etc I want it to be
  
• Any special requests
  

 

Juraj already commented on it, but refrain on using words as "server", "professional" etc, as those are often abused completely out of context by people in order to bring authoritative value to their argument / suggestions through labeling: e.g. "big words make it sound important".

[David Turner]

Sorry if I was a little vague.

But basically what I want is a computer that functions as a server for storing 3ds max scenes.

I'd like to keep the files on the server as I work on them, but I am not sure if I would get the best performance out of my hardware by working over the network.

I would also like to use the server as part of my render farm at times.

I used the term tower server because I am not interested in a rack mounted setup. I don't have the space and it's my understanding that their fans generate a lot of noise.

 

- Budget: $3,000.00-$5,000.00 USD

 

- Physical Size: About the size of you average workstation tower or larger if necessary.

 

- As many drive bays as possible and hot swappable would be preferred

 

Thank you for advice!

-DT

[jasonstewart]

I think you would be better served with 2 separate units. One server, and a render node. The problem will be that any time you are using it is a node it will perform horribly for serving files to anyone else trying to access them. We have a diskstation NAS at work that we use to store all of our files but I am not sure how well that would work for rendering (when I render it is only on my local machine). The nice thing is that they are relatively cheap and there are tons of configurations for different amounts of drives. It is also very small and it is dead silent and generates very little heat.

[David Turner]

Jason,

 

I have a separate render node and 7 NAS units.

I was thinking that it would be more efficient to work off of a server and then assign the render jobs to the render node through Backburner.

It has been my experience that working on files on any of my NAS units has been very slow. I assume is has to do with the lack of speedy hardware in the NAS as they are designed primarily for storage. I would only employ the server as a render node when I wasn't working or needing resources from the server.

 

Ideally I would like to have my production environment setup just like I experienced when I was in the video game industry.

All the files were kept on servers. When you needed to work on a file, you would "check it out" and work on it locally and then check the file back in to the server using the programs Perforce or Source Safe. I don't if there is more affordable alternative to Perforce or Source Safe, I'll have to do some research. Another alternative would be to just copy files to and from the server, but I'm concerned that it would be easy to copy over the wrong file and keeping track of various iterations of files can be just as daunting.

 

Thanks for the input..

-DT

[paneli]

Jason,

 

I have a separate render node and 7 NAS units.

I was thinking that it would be more efficient to work off of a server and then assign the render jobs to the render node through Backburner.

It has been my experience that working on files on any of my NAS units has been very slow. I assume is has to do with the lack of speedy hardware in the NAS as they are designed primarily for storage. I would only employ the server as a render node when I wasn't working or needing resources from the server.

 

Ideally I would like to have my production environment setup just like I experienced when I was in the video game industry.

All the files were kept on servers. When you needed to work on a file, you would "check it out" and work on it locally and then check the file back in to the server using the programs Perforce or Source Safe. I don't if there is more affordable alternative to Perforce or Source Safe, I'll have to do some research. Another alternative would be to just copy files to and from the server, but I'm concerned that it would be easy to copy over the wrong file and keeping track of various iterations of files can be just as daunting.

 

Thanks for the input..

-DT

 

Depends or your NAS.

My almost new WD Sentinel NAS gives me 5-25MB/s

My older Synology DS412+ gives me 112MB/s and is capable for link-aggregation.

I know for sure that some QNAP models also provided with 10Gb/s.

[TomasEsperanza]

I find often people have a retired workstation linked up to their network to use as a server. This seems really logical to me for a number of reasons. I may be missing something, but is there any reason not to do this?

[David Turner]

Thomas,

That's basically the concept I am going for, but I would like to have hardware that is designed for the use of a server.

I was considering below:

http://www.xicomputer.com/products/Configure_prof.asp?model=netraiderxlt&configid=

I am just not sure what would be the optimal configuration for my use.

Any thoughts anyone?

Thanks.

-DT

[paneli]

I find often people have a retired workstation linked up to their network to use as a server. This seems really logical to me for a number of reasons. I may be missing something, but is there any reason not to do this?

 

I just wrote a huge comment and because this cr*p firefox its now gone.

Anyway just visit Synology or QNAP website and see what a NAS can actually offer.

 

I took it mainly because of RAID capabilities. My retired workstation doesn't support RAID 6 and buying additional LSI RAID card and WE RED drives will cast me exactly like a NAS and I didn't want to take chances if anything goes wrong and I wanted a machine that is specifically made for my needs.

Anyway my NAS provides 112MB/s more or less which is almost the speed limit of my network.

 

 

Also, I still wanted to use my old ws for distributed rendering, and something tells me that making is also a storage server is a bad idea.