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Folding Rendering Farm Ideas

C

Catboxer

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Feb 1, 2003
Messages
1,050
Hello,

I've been tasked with coming up with a dedicated rendering farm solution for the Art & Design lab for the University at which I'm currently employed. I've been folding for the [H]orde on and off since 2000, so of course this seemed like the perfect place to get ideas.

I'm thinking of having anywhere from 20-30 machines that will be dedicated to the farm. This farm's primary focus will be rendering 3D models for Maya, Rhino, and AutoCAD using Deadline Render software. BUT, there is going to be a lot of time throughout the school year when they will be sitting idle. Of course this will be a great opportunity to do some folding. :D

My question is, what would be the best way to approach this in a space conscious manner? Rack mounted machines? Or perhaps some sort of "wall of components" with the motherboards, power supplies and HDDs mounted to a wall. As always, the final cost is an issue in getting the budget approved, so I can't go overboard. Any ideas?
 
The cheapest way to do 20-30 machines would be with standard components and inexpensive cases - I wouldn't do any wall mounted stuff if you want to be taken seriously. That would work well as a cheap-as-possible solution, but in a work environment they'd blame your cobbled together setup if anything ever went wrong. If you could spend a little more, rack mounted machines would fit in a tidy little space and slide in and out for easy maintenance. If you were to buy 20 or 30 of them at once, you could probably work a pretty good deal with Dell. Good luck!
 
The quickest and fastest way is to probably just buy a pre-made cheap machine with its own case, and just get a rolling rack, or some shelves and set those bad boys up.

Dell has quad core machines at around $610 right now, with 2 gigs of ram and an 80gig hard drive. 18 grand for 120 cores? Can't beat that shit with a stick.
EDIT: Oops, never mind, the machines no longer exist. They did at the beginning of the month. :rolleyes:

You will need high-current mains and probably an air-conditioned space for this, regardless of who makes the computers.
 
Rackmount.

And make sure you get approval before you install FAH on any of them, tempting as it is. They may give you a hard time about power consumption on 18K worth of computers. :(
 
I'd second the rackmount suggestion. No other configuration will have the same aesthetic appeal, and it will look professional, which will reflect well on you. That being said, there's little reason to buy full rackmount gear from an OEM, because you'll end up paying a large premium for server-grade hardware, which is probably not necessary for this application.

So get a pile of inexpensive rackmount cases, and fill them with commodity hardware. If you're not overclocking (which you shouldn't be doing in this situation), you won't need to spend tons on cooling or even on high-end motherboards.
 
Make sure you also investigate recommended setups for the software that you will be running. What operating systems do they prefer the nodes to be running, hd intensive, memory intensive, run better on AMD or Intel, lan intensive? Try and figure out the best setup that will accomadate the software.

I'd look into getting a deal from Dell, or another OEM. Tell them what setup you are looking for and get a good deal. I believe you'd get the most hardware for you money going this route - you could also work out a great service and warrenty contract for cheap. Definately, go for the professional looking rack setup.

That's what I'd do if I was in your position.
 
I would look into the cost of cooling them.

My 9 boxen put out around 2 kWh of heat.
So 20-30 boxen your probably looking at about double that.

Luck ......... :D
 
30 boxes at 150W each is 4500w. To cool that much heat (4500 x 3.3=14500Btu) I would go with 18000btu (1.5 ton) drawing an additional 2000w (assuming a 9.0Seer) for a total of 6500W/hr or 4680KW/hr/month and a bill of ~$450/mo. Electricity is not cheap and for Tigerbiten its even higher per KW/hr
 
Hmmm, good things to think about. Unfortunately our university does not have an open license with microsoft and my budget is going to be somewhere around 7k. I would like to be able to scale so mounting them to a board might not be the best way. I've been able to spec together some Athlon X2 systems on Micro ATX for about 230 dollars without an OS or case. These should OC to around 2.5 on air. Cooling is going to be an issue. I might be limited to 10 or 15 machines because space is a big concern and I'm doubting I will be able to get dedicated A/C for them. I'm pretty sure I can do a respectably clean install of board mounted components. Micro ATX cases on a tiered wheel cart are another option. I gotta say the 600 dollar quad core solution sounds like the best bang for the buck, No?

edit: A quick look at dell.com has their quad core systems at 3k or more for racks or standard servers.
 
A bunch of overclocked servers running without proper climate control and power conditioning sounds like trouble waiting to happen.

If you're scratch-building your own systems, you might want to budget for spare parts. Since you wont have a service contract, spares allow you to quickly recover from any hardware failures. Granted, being a render farm rather than standard servers or workstations, losing a single box probably isn't quite as big of a deal.
 
Catboxer said:
Hmmm, good things to think about. Unfortunately our university does not have an open license with microsoft and my budget is going to be somewhere around 7k. I would like to be able to scale so mounting them to a board might not be the best way. I've been able to spec together some Athlon X2 systems on Micro ATX for about 230 dollars without an OS or case. These should OC to around 2.5 on air. Cooling is going to be an issue. I might be limited to 10 or 15 machines because space is a big concern and I'm doubting I will be able to get dedicated A/C for them. I'm pretty sure I can do a respectably clean install of board mounted components. Micro ATX cases on a tiered wheel cart are another option. I gotta say the 600 dollar quad core solution sounds like the best bang for the buck, No?

edit: A quick look at dell.com has their quad core systems at 3k or more for racks or standard servers.
Click to expand...

i think they were talking about QC desktops, not servers...
 
Check which type of CPU your render programs run fastest on and by how much, C2D's or X2's.
Theres no point in just getting the cheapest CPU, if the other flavour runs 50% faster and only costs 30% more.
Also find out if cache size, memory bandwidth, pure Ghz, etc, etc, make that a big difference.
If they do then you may well do more work on fewer machines and use less power if the boxen are optimized to the programs.

Luck ........... :D
 
Tigerbiten said:
Check which type of CPU your render programs run fastest on and by how much, C2D's or X2's.
Theres no point in just getting the cheapest CPU, if the other flavour runs 50% faster and only costs 30% more.
Also find out if cache size, memory bandwidth, pure Ghz, etc, etc, make that a big difference.
If they do then you may well do more work on fewer machines and use less power if the boxen are optimized to the programs.

Luck ........... :D
Click to expand...

ya.... I agree with Tiger.

The quad might be your best bang overall... faster, cheaper, and cooler. And they suck less power.
 
They are running Frantic Film's Deadline rendering software. All I know is that I will be unbelievably happy to have them off the lab machines that the faculty and students use. Deadline hasn't written a service for the client machines to run so all machines must autologin to a local profile on reboot and start up the huge GUI. Students have to log out, log back in as themselves to get their network profile. It sucks. Atleast I didn't implement it; I just inherited it.
 
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