mike_sul Posted February 19, 2005 Share Posted February 19, 2005 Hi .. i do not like trhe cost factor involved in a rack system for a renderfarm for 3dsmax.. i would like to know, is it possible to build / assemble a rack system from regular pc components rather than depending on the branded racks .. the keyword is low cost , easy availabilty and maintenance, non dependence on the heavy pocket cuttiing branded rack systems. please advise.. Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chad Warner Posted February 19, 2005 Share Posted February 19, 2005 Sure. That's what we did. We have a setup of 18 1U systems that are built entirely from components. The only tricky thing was to find the case we liked and low profile heatsinks for the processors. Everything else was stock...just a server motherboard, with onboard everything, a cheap harddrive, 2 intels, and 1.5 gb - 2 gb ram. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mike_sul Posted February 19, 2005 Author Share Posted February 19, 2005 gr8.. can u elaborate a bit. what r these 1u, 2u things. did you require any special software setup to recognise the connected pcs. as well how do u configure each board ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted February 19, 2005 Share Posted February 19, 2005 I've been curious about this for a while. I have 2 computers now, but I don't think it would be economical to build more full ATX systems, since there is only myself & my wife that use the computers. So I would love to get a rack mount server sometime, but I really have no idea how those work or what is involved with setting one up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chad Warner Posted February 19, 2005 Share Posted February 19, 2005 1u is the depth of the case. 1u=1.75", 2u=3" so on. Here is a picture of one: http://www.rackmount.com/Rackmt/RM0120FX.htm Then, you only have to buy a power supply that fits into the case (which most of the time, the people who sell the case well the power supply), and all the rest of the components are standard PC components. The setup we have is each machine acts like its own computer, so no clustering. To set up them up, we used ghost to create an image of the first setup and cloned it to the rest of the machines. To run the computers, we have an remote administration program that you can run from the desktop. Plus a KVM switch in case we need it. Then each computer is plugged into a battery backup and a network switch, and away you go. -Chad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beno Posted February 28, 2005 Share Posted February 28, 2005 1u is the depth of the case. 1u=1.75", 2u=3" so on. Here is a picture of one: http://www.rackmount.com/Rackmt/RM0120FX.htm Then, you only have to buy a power supply that fits into the case (which most of the time, the people who sell the case well the power supply), and all the rest of the components are standard PC components. The setup we have is each machine acts like its own computer, so no clustering. To set up them up, we used ghost to create an image of the first setup and cloned it to the rest of the machines. To run the computers, we have an remote administration program that you can run from the desktop. Plus a KVM switch in case we need it. Then each computer is plugged into a battery backup and a network switch, and away you go. -Chad what remote admin. program are you using? I've a 24 node renderfarm and so far I've unable to use the WinXP standard Remote Desktop program. For some strange reason, i can't connect to any node from my workstation. Stranger even, I'm able to connect from a render node to my workstation without any problem... All nodes are properly configured with TCP/IP, sequentially numbered and rendering with Backburner works flawlessly. Is Ghosting of node hard disks a culprit? I can't think of any other reason... i would appreciate any leads... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chad Warner Posted February 28, 2005 Share Posted February 28, 2005 We bought a program called remote administrator...www.radmin.com works great and pretty cheap. I've never even used the remote desktop with XP, so I can't help you there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beno Posted March 1, 2005 Share Posted March 1, 2005 We bought a program called remote administrator...www.radmin.com works great and pretty cheap. I've never even used the remote desktop with XP, so I can't help you there. i downloaded the trial version, installed the Radmin Server on one of the nodes and managed to connect to it from my workstation...so far so good. What annoys me though is that I'm forced to type the login/password everytime I try to take control. That is very tedious...any way around that? I just want to double-click the node icon and get online. Also - is there any way to have more than one remote computer on the 'viewer' screen? I wasn't able to achieve that. thanks for your help Beno Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mtutaj Posted March 1, 2005 Share Posted March 1, 2005 I've been using Ultravnc on all my nodes with out any problems.. http://ultravnc.sourceforge.net/ I also have bginfo installed on all the machines as well. http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/bginfo.shtml Hope this helps. I am also hoping to be able to build 2 rackmount systems here very shortly. Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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