Render Farms

[judesdell]

I work for a small production unit and we are looking to invest in a render farm for the purpose of animation as well. We will be using some PC based programs on a dual boot G5 but need to access outside rendering to speed up the process.....Does anyone have any suggestions on the best way to go about this.

 

[Mini Jay]

Renderfarm Basics

Hi there. I set up our little renderfarm here at the office. There are so many variables involved, but it basically boils down to get x number of machines, a gigE switch to have them talk to each other, some sort of file server to host your project and/or your completed renders, and some type of rendermanager.

Depending on your rendered file sizes, gigE can get a little choked with the shuffling of large file size, especially if you are rendering for HD or film, or even if you are rendering several smaller files. Data is flowing constantly around the network. If it gets to the point when you need to step up the file transfer rate between your machines and central storage, you will have to look into a SAN solution.

I initally went with cutomconfigured 2U RenderBoxx's from Boxx Technology http://www.boxxtech.com, Dell FibreChannel Array, Dell File Server, and a cisco switch, but you can do it for a lot less money.

Jay

 

[Mammoth]

How about a few xServes?

 

[zephead]

We will be using some PC based programs on a dual boot G5...

Uhh.. G5's can't dual-boot Windows, the reason being that the G5's are still PowerPC chips. Intel Macs (i.e. Mac Pros) are the only Macs capable of dual-booting Windows. Just thought I'd let you know.