Starting to build a render farm

[kevinkemp]

Hi all! First post here. I own a small architectural rendering firm (2 people) and want to build a render farm. We have only done still images to date but have a client that wants us to create animations for him. We use 3ds max and VRay. We don’t have a lot of space so I’m looking for a rack solution. I know very little about IT and don’t want to make assumptions but maybe I can start with some basic questions. Does it make more sense to buy many lower cost machines or fewer high cost machines? For instance, if I were able to purchase a few of these every few other month, should I do that or buy 1 machine at 3 times the price? https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/povw/poweredge-r240

 

Would one of these $500 Dells perform ok as a render node? I feel very stupid but everything I read is over my head at this point. Any advice you could give me is appreciated.

[williamsimpson]

It depends how heavy your scenes are etc. Also make sure you can budget for licences for all your plugins (Forest Pack etc.) Make sure you have enough RAM in the machines as well.

[Nils Norgren]

Hello William, We use dell 1u servers in our renderfarm, I would suggest you reach out to Dell to customize the server to exactly your configuration. There are a few things that render machines should have and a few places where you can skip some bells and whistles. You should invest in the best CPU, and the most RAM you can, we get poweredge r640 servers with 2 intel xeon gold 5218 chips, we buy RAM separately and add it ourselves (the dell ram was considerably more), in our latest generation we bumped the machine up to 148 gigs of ram. All in each machine ends up costing about 5k. A render farm is an essential component of our work, which is both stills and animation. We also render AE and Nuke on the farm, but for the most part 95% is max/vray.

 

Some things to skip when buying a server for rendering, you only need a typical windows license, (not "Server") no fancy RAID, (HHD big enough for all software and caches) no redundant power supplies (most servers require this for uptime. Spend all you can on good CPUs and RAM, the rest is just a stripped down computer in a small footprint.

 

Another important point to remember, (apart from software/licenses) is that these type of machines generate lots of heat and are LOUD, they are designed to be in an environment where sound is not a problem and cooling is provided. Our server room is about 200 sq ft, and we have 18 Tons of cooling available. I have included a picture of the newest addition of farm machines.

 

Hope this helps, we bought our first renderfarm back in the late 90's and have been building/rebuilding ever since.

 

-Nils

 

ps. please for your sanity don't use Backburner, invest in a render management system, something, anything else...

 

[williamsimpson]

Thanks Nils but it was Kevin who was asking the question. We are happy with our little farm here at work. Nothing as fancy as you have in the pic there though! Seeing as your location is Boston I am guessing that's the Neoscape farm?

[John Dollus]

Kevin,

If you are using Vray, you should look into the Vray Cloud service.

The dynamics of producing animations have changed a lot in the last couple years so it may no longer make good financial sense to invest in a few locally managed PC's that just sit there 24/7 waiting for something to do if it's just the two of you. If you are determined, I would not plan on more than 5-10 nodes. Management gets more difficult beyond that from several different aspects when it's just the two of you.

 

That said, you may be better off getting a couple threadripper pc's for distributed rendering to help you out with your bread and butter work if you don't already have a 2:1 PC:worker ratio. The 4 Ghz 12 core TR Ryzen's from a couple years ago are down to $200.

Tell Barb i said "Hi".

[Nils Norgren]

Thanks Nils but it was Kevin who was asking the question. We are happy with our little farm here at work. Nothing as fancy as you have in the pic there though! Seeing as your location is Boston I am guessing that's the Neoscape farm?

Sorry bout that, Should have addressed Kevin, Yes, this is our farm here at Neoscape, we keep it busy most of the time, i appreciate John's comment about vray cloud, although i just did a quick AWS calculation to see what 80 machines with the same CPU and RAM as us would cost for a year, it came to over 4 million dollars. Just a back of the napkin calculation, I am sure the vray cloud is less, and you would only use what you need, but it is essential to do the math on the cost it can get expensive. Remember that every frame needs to be rendered multiple times, not only for changes/passes but for review stages.

 

I could talk infrastructure all day, not very sexy but important nonetheless.

 

-Nils

[williamsimpson]

I love the idea of Vray Cloud but the certainty of a local machine shouldn't be discounted. I would have anxiety about needing to meet a deadline and the cloud server being down for maintenance!

[sereyvath san]

Good day everyone , how are u guys doing with ur render business (if u guys still active here)

I want to start at render farm with clueless experience, upon my research I get assist from local Dell EMC Distributor, they suggest :

PowerEdge R6525 Server x 5 units

CPU AMD 7742 2.25GHz,64C/128T

RAM 64GB RDIMM, 3200MT/s, Dual Rank x 8 = 512GB

480GB SSD SAS Mixed use 12Gbps x 2 (I kinda feel this is too low)

 

and I wanted to know if anyone can help better way to run distributed rendering with these server. I only use 3d max, Vray and Corona the most.

I have no idea for the infrastructure and the licensing on the regard, and also someone have recommend me to use Backburner too.

Thankfully in Advance