Render Farm setup

[captaincheerios]

So I have a question that I can't seem to find answered anywhere.

When it comes to building a render farm server.  The server in question is to be running Dual Epyc 7601 processors and rendering with Backburner as a renderfarm.  The question I have been put to me is that running multiple Virtual Machines will be faster since it can render multiple frames at once, while I am trying to say that you will lose performance running the virtual machines themselves so having it running as a windows server rendering a single frame at a time with all 64 cores focused on the task.

 

Does anyone have any advice on how the server should be setup?  Multiple VMs per CPU, 1 VM per cpu, or no VMs at all.

[Electronics Wizardy]

VMS really won't help you here as while you can render multipe frames at once, each frrame will render slower. Adn most renderin scales very well o that core number.

[TheGlenlivet]

The only reason to use a VM would be if you needed to run other tasks that need other OS's at the same time as rendering.  At least that's all I can think of.

WIndows will let you assign cores to tasks if you need them for other operations, so another windows VM doesn't make sense to me, unless I am missing something in your description of the workload.

[captaincheerios]

The work load is specifically as a node in a render farm.  My boss seems to think setting up the server to run multiple VMs is going to make it render faster because it will be rendering more frames at once.

Since I'm not a server IT, just a software engineer and they are just a 3D Artist they won't listen to me so I'm trying ot find some sort of concrete writing to say "this is how and why".  I tried explaining to them you need more ram and cpu set asside just to run each VM that it would be faster to run them on a single OS since Backburner scales with n-cores

[scottyseng]

Yeah, I think just making multiple VMs is going to make things worse (Since you have OS overhead for each VM...  / not to mention the cost per license of Windows if using Windows)

 

That really sucks though, I hope you can get them to understand that one VM (or bare OS install) is enough to get the full power.

[cr0zzb0w]

Well, the thing is, if you want to have multiple frames rendering on the same machine, you can use something like "Deadline" that allows all sorts of projects to be executed simultaneously. Well, i had experience with backburner and for me it lacked some advance control that a tool like deadline offers. (Im guessing you are using autodesk products such as maya or max to render)

[alex75871]

I use VMs when a different OS is required or I want to separate different types of services so I don't have all my eggs in one basket if that makes sense?

[Salv8 (sam)]

10 hours ago, captaincheerios said:

-snip-

explain it to your boss this way:

think of a VM like a computer sharing water with other computers

if one computer is consuming a lot of water from a source to complete a task quickly the other computers have less water so they can't complete their tasks as quickly

now imagian every one trying to drink a lot of water, each computer would be unable to complete their task quickly because they don't have a lot of water

now the task is rendering out a workload and the water is the processing power it has available to it

 

if he still doesn't listen, get a server admin (if you have one, even someone who takes care of the servers will do, doesn't matter so long as he is a higher position then you) to explain to him what you saying is correct and this would just cost too much money, increase the time of the render and would hurt the business's profit quite a bit because of the inefficiency of it