Render farm set up (vmware vs dedicated standalone_

[Fido McNasty]

Hello all,

Been a while. Right, I have a bit of a situation at work.
I am the sole CGI Artist for a largish furniture manufacturing company. I use 3ds Max and render outputs are frequent which of course mandates render farm usage. The question is not whether to have a farm or not, that's just a given.

The issue I seem to be experiencing is how to ascertain the validity to my IT manager of standalone render node machines (GPU's). I've a reasonable understanding of networking and computing at large I think and my argument is for the provision of dedicated render node hardware.

Currently the nodes (there are two and I can render on my workstation too) are hosted on VMware setups within the company mainframe. Problems with the setup are frequent and although I am assured the hardware is 'up to the task' I am struggling to believe this is an ideal setup (whether cost effective or not) as the nodes are fundamentally unreliable and unstable.

Is there a standard practise illustrated anywhere which clearly lists the pro's and cons of each set up (VMware vs dedicated hardware) and how the set ups compare?

Alternately, could anyone possibly offer up a reasonably concise sysnopsis?

 

[Fido McNasty]

Hi Hades thanks for taking the time to respond.

The VM's are hosted on one of a handful of drives, I think there are four. These four form the company mainframe system for data storage and active data entry and retrieval with approximately 25 access points. The rendering I set up is fairly high end with large graphic texture files (GPU processed) and complex models (more CPU processed). As far as my experience tells me the render nodes are reliant upon GPU and CPU power. The CPU power is plentiful however there are no graphics cards or GPU based architecture as far as I am aware. A dedicated GPU rendering machine would have GPU capability be that via actual cards physically installed. If I don't sound concrete about all this it's because I am not all that proficient in determining the nature of the architectural host.

As far as general processing goes I can see the logic in VM but for high end graphics I really am not sold that this works. Reliability is a bit of a challenge to diagnose reliably however, the actuall reliability of the VM set ups is historically not good. Interferance from maintenance routines and mainframe traffic may affect rendering performance. Fundamentally I do consider that the VM set up is liable to interferance as well as being un determined as a valid and professional GPU render node set up. It is this that I really seek guidance on and to be honest, my IT man is good but he's not a 3d modelling/rendering expert by any stretch. He does insist the setup is good enough and reliable but I am struggling to agree.