Combined server + render farm build for small architecture firm

[MuffinManDan]

Hi all,

 

I'm an architect in training at a new job, and my boss is in need of a new server for the business. He is also interested in the idea of having an in-house render farm. I've been tasked with researching the options out there and presenting him with some ideas. My first thought was to combine the two into a single computer that could run two virtualizations - one more modest for the server, and another, more powerful one with the remaining cores for rendering. My questions are these: 1 - is this possible and 2 - is the new Ryzen platform capable of this configuration? The 1800x is an incredible value compared to Xeon offerings, but will it be enough for all this heavy lifting? Is waiting for Threadripper a better move? Or should we just bite the bullet and stick with Intel?

[Max_Settings]

If you are running a VM, wait for threadripper. Or you also could buy one of those cases that let you put an ATX and Mini ITX system in the same case, and have two different PCs in the same package

[themctipers]

wait for threadripper. 

xeon would be better in single core IPC, at a huge price premium. threadripper will be much cheaper and would have more cores than a competing xeon at the same price point. 

 

threadripper, use that if your workload is based on cores and not IPC with 3 cores

[brwainer]

An AMD platform will be fine, but I would wait until server/workstation boards come out. There has been a few Ryzen workstation boards, but they are still a bit more gamer oriented. The new AMD server platform is being fully announced on 6/20 I believe.

 

As for it being possible - absolutely. To make it easy you can just give both VMs access to all the processors, the hypervisor will sort it out. But I would personally give the server VM access to half the cores, and the rendering VM access to (Total - 2) cores or (Total - 4) threads if its a hyperthreaded / SMT CPU - that will prevent the rendering VM from causing the server to stop responding when a big job comes through.

[LienusLateTips]

Threadripper

1 minute ago, brwainer said:

An AMD platform will be fine, but I would wait until server/workstation boards come out. There has been a few Ryzen workstation boards, but they are still a bit more gamer oriented. The new AMD server platform is being fully announced on 6/20 I believe.

 

As for it being possible - absolutely. To make it easy you can just give both VMs access to all the processors, the hypervisor will sort it out. But I would personally give the server VM access to half the cores, and the rendering VM access to (Total - 2) cores or (Total - 4) threads if its a hyperthreaded / SMT CPU - that will prevent the rendering VM from causing the server to stop responding when a big job comes through.

Threadripper should be fine over EPYC.

[brwainer]

38 minutes ago, JDE said:

Threadripper

Threadripper should be fine over EPYC.

Threadripper won't be available until after EPYC. But regardless my point stands - right now there are no server grade motherboards, nor any COTS systems (HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc) that are available with Ryzen. All I said is that the server stuff will be announced on 6/20. I expect that we will hear about server systems that use CPUs with less than 32 cores at that time as well.

[leadeater]

Used Xeons are also a great option combined with new motherboards and other new parts.

[Erkel]

Figure out what your actual requirements are, then go a tier 1 vendor, ie Dell, HP and have a cry about the cost.  Stick with Intel,  as per Linus's comments on the last WAN show regarding the workstations,  he went at the end of the product cycle, to get something that had all the bugs worked out.

 

Leave the playing to your home rig,  Go with stuff that is been tried and tested in a business environment.

[MuffinManDan]

18 hours ago, Erkel said:

Figure out what your actual requirements are, then go a tier 1 vendor, ie Dell, HP and have a cry about the cost.  Stick with Intel,  as per Linus's comments on the last WAN show regarding the workstations,  he went at the end of the product cycle, to get something that had all the bugs worked out.

 

Leave the playing to your home rig,  Go with stuff that is been tried and tested in a business environment.

I was beginning to think the same thing myself. Tinkering isn't really in my job description anyway.

[tedvitale]

@MuffinManDan What host application and rendering software are you working with?  That makes a big difference on how you set up a network. 

[System Error Message]

it depends on what program you're using. Blender can do CPU+ GPU cluster rendering and its free. Luxmark/render cant do render farms but can use CPUs + GPUs

 

if you want CPU, threadripper is great, or you can go for those older multicore xeons used (make sure they are iseries and not core2). If the software supports GPU farm rendering you can get budget CPUs and spend on GPUs, you will get a huge performance boost.

 

For GPUs they like bigger workloads, in blender i set them to the tile size of the image. If multiple GPUs than set a big number that can be divided among them. (like 512x512 for a 1024 pixel image for 4 GPUs).

[MuffinManDan]

On 7/11/2017 at 7:53 AM, tedvitale said:

@MuffinManDan What host application and rendering software are you working with?  That makes a big difference on how you set up a network. 

Primarily rendering within Revit, then Photoshop for post-processing and entourage.

[scottyseng]

5 hours ago, MuffinManDan said:

Primarily rendering within Revit, then Photoshop for post-processing and entourage.

Ah, Revit uses Mental Ray, which is 100% CPU based. You want a lot of cores for Mental Ray. I think network distributed rendering is only available if you buy Mental Ray from Nvidia, and I'm not sure if It has Revit support for that (I usually see it for 3DS Max / Maya)

 

It renders well on my 14 core Xeon (E5-2695V3).

[GDRRiley]

well this may be a good box if you need some storage and rendering https://www.supermicro.com/Aplus/system/Tower/4023/AS-4023S-TRT.cfm or if you need more render and less space per server, you could get 2 of these https://www.supermicro.com/Aplus/system/1U/1023/AS-1023US-TR4.cfm