[no subject]

Thanks again for your input.

If you were in Toronto, I would buy you lunch


Leoung
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Stefan Andersson wrote:<br>
<blockquote
 cite="mid3ce9baa40602240027w690f4583r9cb9f095639bbf29(at)mail.gmail.com"
 type="cite">
  <pre wrap="">Hello,

I can't speak of Tiny since I'm not using it, though I can give you
some of our thoughts when we built ours (10 x dual opterons). First
thing, we are using the 32bit version of both XP and XSI, mainly
because the 64bit platform is still quite new and there aren't that
many things that re compiled for it (shaders and such). So, my tip
there would be to run XSI and the render machines on 32bit (regardless
of linux or windows choice).

For file server, I recommend that you get a linux box for that with a
raid that is mirroring the disks. You don't want a disk failure and
then loose all of your material. Configure it with 2 Gbit cards, one
that the renderfarm is using and one that the workstations are using.
We did this to ensure that the speed will be maintained even though
you have lots of machines accessing the fileserver.
Then get a tape backup, no need for automatic backups since you are
running a mirrored raid. So do one "manual" backup each week, or when
ever it's necessary.

Here is a free SSH client that you can use to access the server (oh
yeah... learn command line stuff...)
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/";>http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/</a>

Linux also has the benefit that you can use symbolic links. Which is
really a life savior when you start making your own project structure.

As for DOF, we are using zDepthDOF with 5.0 which seems to work nice.
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://homepage.mac.com/bauer/portfolio_shaders/zDepthDOF/zDepthDOF.html";>http://homepage.mac.com/bauer/portfolio_shaders/zDepthDOF/zDepthDOF.html</a>

I hope it helps :)

best regards
stefan andersson


On 2/23/06, digimata <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:digimata(at)digimata.com">&lt;digimata(at)digimata.com&gt;</a> wrote:
  </pre>
  <blockquote type="cite">
    <pre wrap="">We are puting together a "Tiny Rendering Farm"  with the help of Kim.

We are puting together 5 Dual Core, Dual Opteron270 and 2 Dual XEONs
running XP Pro 32 bit
And 1 AMD Athlon 4200 Dual core as the file Server running SUSE10.

I would like to hear some opinions on other people's experience of
puting together a farm.
I know this topic have been bashed around quite a bit.

I am debating to use mirroring or an araid for my file server?

We are still running 4.2, want to upgrade to 5.0 but since we plan to
use Evasion's XDOF in our workflow
and they don't have a version for 5.0 yet, it is a problem. Any
suggestion for DOF for XSI 5?

Are people seeing the benefit of running XSI in 64 bits or is it still
early in the game to switch over.

By the way I was very impressed by Kim's demo on his "Tiny RenderFarm"
software

Leoung
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