gigabit network for network rendering

[dclive]

You've 802.11ad already? And you only have 100Mb ethernet?

 

[uzuncakmak]

How about you figure out where your bottleneck is first BEFORE spending lots of money? 🙂

I am having these discussions while I am available during this Easter time, after then I will be fully back to work and not have time for any kind of research and discussion at all.. therefore, I am learning my path to walk, in advance of my initial testing stage..

 

[dclive]

Until now I have consulted Cisco, Intel and Dell and now I will consult both Adobe and Nvidia (for a GPU/openGL based rendering solution e.g. tesla)...

I would bring in a real consultant; it sounds like you're just calling 1-800 numbers and getting 1-800 # style "advice", which sounds quite poor so far. The Cisco advice was a stinker from the start; how can they know what you need when you don't know what you need, either?

I suggest you hook up with an Adobe AE solutions engineer / professional. Do you have an Adobe AE support agreement?

 

[uzuncakmak]

You've 802.11ad already? And you only have 100Mb ethernet?

what is 802.11ad???

Yes, at the moment my switches do not support GigE...

 

[dclive]

what is 802.11ad???

Yes, at the moment my switches do not support GigE...

If you don't have 802.11ad, also called link aggregation, then buying 4 ethernet ports and plugging them into your switch won't help you a bit and won't increase speeds one iota.

You wrote:

which would connect to the switch with 4 separate ports and then by link aggregation I can get 4 times the bandwidth..

So I'm confused on what you have and what you don't... You are aware that with 802.11ad you'll only get more bandwidth if you have 2+ clients that are simultaneously swamping the GigE connection, right? For what you're doing, I doubt those machines will deliver anything close to that level of bandwidth being required.

If you do a render of all the machines at once, where is your bottleneck?

 

[alfa147x]

Subscribed.

I'm working on testing out this system for our 10 machines. The plan is to purchase one dual xeon quad core HP server / workstation. Add two 250gb SSDs and run them in RAID 1. Which allow queuing of up to 4 projects at once. Then tie in a fast NAS which autobacks up to a much slower SAN.

Then allow users to queue up their projects while they render then it off loads the finished file from the SSDs to the local NAS where the users can "pick up" the finished render.

I am the very early stages of this project. Currently setting up VMs for each machine and server to test the theory. We currently use After Effects + Premiere but I know they are looking for an upgrade. They are considering replacing all of the current machines with Mac Minis so then they can use FCX and Motion while being semi portable.

If you don't mind updating us on what route you went with that would be great!


Edit:
Currently each machine either renders their own project or for more time constraint project the files are moved to the fastest machine (Mac Pro)

 

[uzuncakmak]

If you don't have 802.11ad, also called link aggregation, then buying 4 ethernet ports and plugging them into your switch won't help you a bit and won't increase speeds one iota.

You wrote:



So I'm confused on what you have and what you don't... You are aware that with 802.11ad you'll only get more bandwidth if you have 2+ clients that are simultaneously swamping the GigE connection, right? For what you're doing, I doubt those machines will deliver anything close to that level of bandwidth being required.

If you do a render of all the machines at once, where is your bottleneck?

I said that after buying a GigE switch with link aggregation support then I can get 4 times the bandwidth on the SERVER...

 

[dclive]

I said that after buying a GigE switch with link aggregation support then I can get 4 times the bandwidth on the SERVER...

Does the server currently have a network bottleneck? If you test it with a few clients going, what happens?

 

[uzuncakmak]

Does the server currently have a network bottleneck? If you test it with a few clients going, what happens?

I will be installing AE in all the other machines after this Easter then I can run tests.. so all these discussions are in theory and in advance of my test...

 

[dclive]

I will be installing AE in all the other machines after this Easter then I can run tests.. so all these discussions are in theory and in advance of my test...

What is your per-license cost for AE? If it's under $1000 or so, I suggest you move to I5 or I7-class hardware, as the hardware you're currently using is slow and very, very old.

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/...deo-Editing-Adobe-After-Effects-CS5,2427.html

(A standard i7 from 2010, the 2600, is 3x the speed of the 2.93 Core 2 Duo CPU.)

 

[uzuncakmak]

What is your per-license cost for AE? If it's under $1000 or so, I suggest you move to I5 or I7-class hardware, as the hardware you're currently using is slow and very, very old.

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/...deo-Editing-Adobe-After-Effects-CS5,2427.html

(A standard i7 from 2010, the 2600, is 3x the speed of the 2.93 Core 2 Duo CPU.)

Migrating 20 computers from core 2 Duo to i5 or i7 is not cost effective for me

 

[uzuncakmak]

Subscribed.

I'm working on testing out this system for our 10 machines. The plan is to purchase one dual xeon quad core HP server / workstation. Add two 250gb SSDs and run them in RAID 1. Which allow queuing of up to 4 projects at once. Then tie in a fast NAS which autobacks up to a much slower SAN.

Then allow users to queue up their projects while they render then it off loads the finished file from the SSDs to the local NAS where the users can "pick up" the finished render.

I am the very early stages of this project. Currently setting up VMs for each machine and server to test the theory. We currently use After Effects + Premiere but I know they are looking for an upgrade. They are considering replacing all of the current machines with Mac Minis so then they can use FCX and Motion while being semi portable.

If you don't mind updating us on what route you went with that would be great!


Edit:
Currently each machine either renders their own project or for more time constraint project the files are moved to the fastest machine (Mac Pro)

What fast NAS solution do you think of?

 

[Lifted]

Migrating 20 computers from core 2 Duo to i5 or i7 is not cost effective for me

I think his point was you could possibly get the same job done with 5 - 10 new i7 computers, and save on the licensing for AE. You would also save on other any other software/licensing that you have on the machines, and power, switch ports, heat, management overhead, etc.

Assuming the latest quad core i7 systems are 4x faster at rendering, you should be able to get by with 5 or so i7 rendering PC's.

 

[uzuncakmak]

I think his point was you could possibly get the same job done with 5 - 10 new i7 computers, and save on the licensing for AE. You would also save on other any other software/licensing that you have on the machines, and power, switch ports, heat, management overhead, etc.

Assuming the latest quad core i7 systems are 4x faster at rendering, you should be able to get by with 5 or so i7 rendering PC's.

We will soon possibly replace all the PCs with the new ones and even get a second set of new PCs then it all seems logic to invest on the network infrastructure.