I'm the proud new owner of an unliminited dongle for Network Render - I have followed the instructions on the forums about downloading hdd32.exe, and net2006.exe.

I installed the hdd32.exe on the server hooked up the doungle - installed net2006.exe - and all is well.

My problem is that I want to us the server with the dongle to do just that serve. I can launch A:M on the server.

I installed net2006.exe on my workstation (on the same network and workgroup as the server) - when I try and run A:M from my workstation it says "Hasp Not Found (15)"

I can run it from the server PC with no problem - A:M launches - BUT I cant run A:M from my workstation

Do I need to tell A:M where the server is??

sam

You will need to have the dongle attached to the machine that you will be running master and/or renderserver on. The unlimited hasp will allow you to run an unlimited number of client renderslaves on other machines.

There is another product that is used mainly for schools that is a multi-seat network or "NetHasp" that allows a fixed number of client "Animation Master" users to run off of one "NetHasp" that is attached to a single computer. This hasp is priced based on the number of maximum concurrent users.

Thanks for your responce -

Hopefully you can give me some advice- -

I just bought 10 PC's to make a render farm for a project that I am working on - The workflow as I intended was to have 1 PC to act as the file server and render server. The 10 PC's to just render day and night, and I have my primary workstation that runs A:M as well as Avid, Combustion, ect... If the dongle is on my primary workstation I cant reboot and such (normal day to day activities). I would like to work in A:M on my primary PC - (Dual Xeon 3.6 with 4 gigs of ram -twin 20" sony moniters - ectra)

Any suggestions on how I can run the server on a PC that is not the dongle PC?

sam

You can setup a low end machine to be the server in your farm.

Remember, with a windows network you can only have 10 connections to a "server" machine (win2k or XP pro). Win 2k Home can only have 5 connections.

The server machine can also be a render slave, as Render Master requires very little resources.

What type of slaves did you purchase? OS? RAM?

David

I don't know how to make that happen - The only way I can make A:M run is on the PC that has the dongle - the only way I can run the server is on the PS with the dongle - I want to run A:M on my workstation and let the server have the dongle.

I bought 10 P4 2.8 PCs with 512 megs of ram and XP Pro installed.

BTW how can I make more than 10 PC connect to the server??

sam

Sam,

I may be missing your point......

Do you Own A:M on CD?

In order to run A:M on a workstation and use Render Master, you need the CD in the workstation.

The dongle resides in the "server" machine.

In order to run more than 10 connections to the server you would need to install Windows 2003 Server (I'm pretty sure there is a newer version).

There is a different less expensive way that involves creating a Linux server and changing how projects are stored on your network.

David

EDIT: NR is not a networked version of AM as far as I understand. It is a Network Rendering program.

[

The Netrender Server must have the dongle physically plugged in - there is no way around this.

The ultimate solution for you would be to get a second dongle (which means a complete second A:M license) just for the Rendering Server.

However, if i were in your position, I would have the dongle in the workstation and run Netrender server from the workstation. Netrender does restart cleanly and resume a render without missing any frames, so it is easy to live with the occaisonal reboot.

Just start out using the workstation as the server and see how it goes.

David's advice is right about the 10 workstation limit for workgroups. Above 10 machines and by design, some apsects of networking get sick.

The traditional solution is to change from a Workgroup system to a Domain Server system. This means you need a domain server which can be either a very expensive Microsoft Server, or a free Linux system running Samba for windows networking and domain server functions. Unfortunately, the people who have created the Linux server software believe that terms like "LDAP" and "Kerebos" are as simple and obvious as "spline" and "5-point patch' to an A:M user.

Setting up a Domain Server network is a big subject so here are just some quick points:

Pros: Better Security - Security controlled from the one server rather then individually on each PC
Unlimited numner of PC's (except with Microsoft Server, you have to buy an addtional CAL
license (not cheap) for every PC.
Domain Server doesn't need much of a PC - a 400MHz PII is more then enough
Much easier to control large number of PC's then a big Workgroup.

Cons: A Domain network depends on the domain server to work. You must have a reliable way to back up
the server and resotre it quickly.
Definitely more complex then a workgroup.

The Domain Server doesn't even need a seperate PC at all!

A MUCH better solution is to go to the VMWare site and download VMWare player and also, say, the Ubuntu Linux Appliance (a fully pre-installed and running Linux as a VMware virtual PC). This can be loaded onto one of the Render Slave boxes. Run the Linux Server as a virtual PC and set it up as your Domain Server. The beauty of this approach is that you can backup the server simply by copying the files in the Virtual Machine folder, and if the server hardware dies, just run the copied files on any other PC and you Domain Server will instantly be back.

Hope this helps

Richard Harrowell.

Rich,

I read and re-read your post and am amazed.

I think I get about 80% of it (this must be your line of work).
Granted the sharpest knife in the drawer I am not, but been around NR a while I have (Yoda voice).

Surely there is an easier way to communicate this concept (not for me, my setup works very well)?

David

Sorry about that David.

I will try and restate some of this and keep it really simple.

What is the 10 Connection Limit for Microsoft Workgroups?

If you are running a workgroup, Microsoft have intentially limited the TCP/IP stack (in C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\tcpip.sys) so that you cannot connect to more then 10 PC's at a time.

You can have more then 10 PC's in a workgroup, but if you try and connect to more then 10 PC's at the same time, you will get an Error 71 happenning and the extra connections will be blocked. So you might get away with a workgroup with more then 10PC's, but expect the occaisonal network communication failure.

If you use a Domain Server based network, Microsoft switch off this 10 connection limit.

How Would this 10 Connection limit show up in a Netrender Workgroup?

Initially, everything might seem to be working with more than 10 slaves.

However, over time, I would expect to see Slaves disabled progressively by the Netrender Server due to communication errors. They would still show up as being "On-Line" in the lower window.

Is there a really simple way of setting up a Domain Server system?

No.

Can I get into serious trouble with a badly set up Domain Network?

Yes. Worst case, you could find youself shut out of every PC.

If I get a Domain Server, it better be something Really Powerful. Right?

A Domain Server spends all its time doing absolutely nothing. It is just a manager and nothing more. For a network of, say, 50 PC's, even an old 100MHz Pentium I with 128MBytes of RAM would do fine. You just want something reliable.

What is all this Virtual PC stuff?

It is much easier to try it then to read explanations. Go to www.vmware.com and download the free VMPlayer. Then go to their Appliance library and download one to try.

If you try it, it takes no time to understand it. You have a complete seperate PC running inside VMPlayer - seperate IP address, seperate everything. The complete virtual PC exists in one big file - called an "Appliance".

Is there a good Reason to Consider using Virtual PC's?

Very good reasons, especially for something like a Domain server.

If a Domain Server dies, then the network dies.

So if if your Server PC starts spouting smoke and flames, what are you going to do.

If you are running a Domain Server on a VMWare virtual PC, that just copy the Appliance files to a DVD and it is backed up.

If you need to set up a replacement server, just install VMWare on a different PC. Copy the Appliance files. Run VMPlayer.

That is it!

Your server will be running exactly as it did before. Even if the new PC's hardware is totally different, it will have no effect on the running of the appliance.

There is no alternative that is simpler or faster.

Richard Harrowell.

Rick,
I think we may have not stated the 10 machine limit (as it relates to NR) clearly enough.

tvdirector911,
NR does NOT have a 10 PC limit.

The 10 connection limit comes in when you try to connect the render slaves to the Project Files where ever they are stored.

NR "tells" the slaves where to look for the project files, the slaves need to be able to connect to the machine holding the project files. That is where the 10 machine limit comes into play.

We got around the 10 machine limit it by setting up a linux box to hold all out projects and rendered frames. Linux does not have a 10 machine limit.

We work on our projects on work stations, then copy the entire project directory to the linux server.
All the slaves have a mapped drive to the linux server's project and rendered frames directories.

We run NR, point it at the project files on the linux box, tell NR to have the slaves write their frames to the directory on the linux box.

It works really well (but I am really intrigued by the Vmware domain controller idea).

This is not easy to explain.
David

Thanks Guys - - I have my BIG cup of coffee this morning - and about to roll up my sleeves!!

One quick question - Dave you brought up the question if I had A:M on the CD - and yes I do - how would I go about reinstalling the CD version on my workstation but then allowing that work station to become part of the render farm at night? If I install the net render version it dosn't look for the CD.

sam

Sam,
Create a shortcut to your desktop for the Renderslave.exe (in the program files/hash/v13 directory).
To put your computer on the farm at night, just double-click the shortcut and NR will see it and have access to it.

To reinstall the CD version, download the latest AM2006.exe (I am assuming you have installed all the latest versions of Net2006.exe on each of the slaves) and run it.

To run A:M you may want to have a shortcut on your desktop to the Master.exe (in the program files/hash/v13 directory). It should be that simple.

How are you controlling the slave machines? We use VNC to control them over the network.
You will also want to setup the slaves to automatically start NR and VNC on booting up. That way if a slave gets hung up you can just reboot it, and it will take off rendering again without intervention.

Good luck!

David

David,

Your comments made me realise that some of my statements are not quite correct.

All versions of Windows XP since Microsoft Service Pack 2 (including Server 2003) are limited to 10 concurent TCP/IP connections under all conditions. If there are more then 10 requests for connections, the overflow get put in a queue.

It is possible to patch TCPIP.SYS to overcome this, but I gather that Microsoft security updates often reset the limit back to 10.

This 10 concurrent connection limit was not the case for XP Pro Sp1, Win2000 server or Nt4 server. I think Microsoft did this to limit the damage a virus-infected pc could do on the Internet.

Worgroups still limit connections to a resource ( a printer, mapped drive, etc) to ten connections, so as long as the Render Slaves don't permanently connect to any Network resource on a Windows PC, you can make a workgroup grow to a fair size.

So the moral is, as you have implied,

"Use a shared drive on a Linux pc for the Netrender Project and Render files".

As you have suggested, it should overcome most workgroup limitations.

I don't currently have a big render network, but I am working to set up a system which will have at the start two Linux servers (I have one as a spare), 10 render slaves, at least 7 workstations and since everyone has notebooks as well, there could be an additional 7 notebooks. That means support for at least 26 pc's.

I have decided to just go straight to a Linux based domain server system from the start. Even if I could get a Workgroup to do the job, Domian Server networks just work much better then large Workgroup networks.

I will probably fork out the $150 for a package like PowerSMB because I want a single Windows domain controller interface that is simple and fast. Standard Linux servers use a complete hotpotch of programs, configuration files, daemons, etc to provide the compleat Windows Domain Server functionality and I think it just gets too complicated.

My whole aim is to design the network so that it is really easy to keep it working because I just will not have time to be tinkering with network issues. That is the reason I have been doing all the Virtual PC testing lately.

Richard Harrowell.

Rick,

Do you work at a studio using A:M?

That's a lot of hardware otherwise.

Great information as always!!

David

A group of us are in the process of setting up a studio right now.

There will be a lot of hardware, and we actually have most of it already We have been buying a lot of excellent stuff very cheaply second hand. I actually have everything except for the workstations (we will buy new PCs), a big gigabit networking switch and a pile of nice, big hard drives to store all our OpenEXR renders.

It looks like I will end up doing lots of the set-building, rigging, lighting, rendering, compositing, and a bit of animating. That's why I want to get all the network running and sorted in advance - the network is my job as well.

Animation Master looked like such a simple program when we started using it....

Richard Harrowell.

Sam,
So how are you doing with this??
David

Hey guys - -

I know this would be MUCH easer if I were only trying to attach 10 or less computers to the render farm.

I am in the middle of all this fun - and had 2 quick questions..

I am seperating the file server from the render server. So that I am clear - -

1. Are you saying that the network render server can run on a XP PRO PC and NOT run into the 10 PC limit?

2. I know I need to go to a Linux file server and I have been reading up on the VMware player running Ubunto and trying to configure a file server when I had this thought.
What if I just go buy a network attached storage device - If i'm not mistaken they run on a Linux base.
I am thinking about this one from best buy

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?sk...d=1124432576118

If that works, and the render server dosn't care how many PCs are attached then BAMN!! problem solved and I just might have a beer at lunch!!

sam

1. You are correct that the Render Master Server will not have a problem with more than 10 connections as long as you use the Render Master and Render Messenger software to have them communicate. You do not want to have any mapped drives TO the Machine running Render Master.
Remember, you CAN have the Machine that runs Render Master, also function as a slave, running Render Messenger.

I have no experience with the external unit you mentioned, but am curious how it works.

Our Linux server is an AMD duron 1Ghz machine and it works fine, so you can get by with a pretty simple machine. We bought the linux package SUSElinux 10.0, because it had everything we needed. It took me a while to get it setup (there is a WIP portion of how I did it, here in the Netrender forum).

Enjoy!
David

I am considering a dedicated network file server - either a dedicated file server box or a PC that just does file serving.

There are two issues to consider with the dedicated boxes:

1. The speed of a lot of them is lousy. A lot of them come with 100Mbit/s ethernet and work at speeds between 3mBytes/sec and 7MBytes/sec. Considering that it is easy to get drives with speeds of more than 50MBytes/sec, this is just too slow. Say you have to copy 4.7 GBytes of renders (one DVD's worth). It could take half an hour! That is just too slow because I cannot even directly burn a DVD from the network drive - the drive cannot deliver data fast enough for the burner.

The Wireless drives you are looking at run on the 54MHz wirless network so they might be even slower - -check!

2. Many of the dedicated fileserver boxes are based in Linux (which means Samba for the Windows networking features). Microsoft Vista has a new fast search, but on most current dedicated Networked drives, it will only show the first 100 matches in any search because these drives are not Vista-compatible.

Samba 3.0.22 and later have been fixed to be compatible, but these changes are too new for most dedicated file server boxes.


My current thinking is to put together my own file server box with one of the tiny Linux distros (like the 50MByte "Damn Small Linux" perhaps?) on a cheap motherboard with gigabit LAN. It will be fully Windows Vista compatible, very fast, and the whole computer will probably be cheaper then the price of each of the drives that will go into it.

Richard Harrowell.

I just did another calculation.

If you put a new 800GByte hard drives into a dedicated LAN fileserver box that had a maximum speed ( as many do) of about 3MBytes/sec. Then to, say, backup the whole drive would take 3 days - as long as nothing else was trying to use the drive at the same time.

The whole time, the drive would never be able to run at faster than 1/20th of its rated speed.

Richard Harrowell.

An Ideal A:M File Server ?

I think I have found a good solution for a fast A:M fileserver.

There is a free package called FreeNAS.

FreeNAS Webpage

This comes as a 30MByte cd ISO image that can be installed on PC hardware to make a dedicated file server for Windows, MAc, Unix or Linux systems.

The hardware requirements are faily modest needing 96Mbytes of RAM minimum.

When installed, you need a bootable drive for the Operating system but this drive can be a Hard drive, or a USB memory stick (64MBytes might be enough) or a CF memory chip (most of the minature low power Via Eden processor based motherboards come with a CF slot on the motherboard.)

So all that is required is a cheap motherboard + processor + 128MBytes RAM + 128MByte USB memory + case and powersupply.

Everything is controlled by web-type menus and the package includes rsync servers and clients. This means you can have two identical fileservers on your system, and rsync will ensure that the harddisks remain fully syncronised.

It does support wireless networking so with a cheap wireless network card, you can have wireless networking as well as the LAN access.

FreeNAS is available as an Appliance from the vmware site, so you can fully test it out before you spend a cent. I think the FreeNAS vmware appliance comes complete with several small virtual data drives so you can test a complete multi-drive system. You could even test how many concurrent connections you can have in a workgroup environment.

There is no need for any more then a tiny PC box since the smallest boxes can now easily hold 1 TeraByte of storage and if you want more, you are better off with several seperate boxes for redundancy and for network speed.

I think you could build the basic fileserver (less the hard drives) for under $200, and this will probably be superior to any $1000 commercial fileserver box.

Richard Harrowell.

Just to give an update -

I did purchase the D-Link DSM-G600 and put a 160g hard drive in it (it was on sale for $69 bucks!!)

It has a gigabit port and built in FTP server - I pushed over a 1 gig file from my PC and it took 30 secs. All in all I like the set-up. A small box that cost $120 bucks - file serves and gives me a FTP server.

I have a small version of the farm up and running - I did a simple network mapped drive to all the PCs from a folder on the network storage device. Everything seems to be working nice.

The 10 render PC's are on order and should ship on Monday or Tuesday - That will be the real test - Having 13 PC's on the Farm.

Thanks for all your help -

sam

Hey Guys - -
Just wanted to give you an update...

I got my render farm up and running with no probles so far.

I have 10 dell 2.8 ghz pc's with 1 vaio 3.2 ghz and 1 dual xeon 3.6 ghz pc that make up the farm.

Using the D-link file server to manage the files - all pc's have a mapped networked drive that pulles the projects from and writes the rendered files to.

I am now going to try and get a mac in the mix - - any advice on how to mapp the network drive on the mac??

thanks for all your help

sam

Sounds good keep us updated sam. I myself had planned to do this very same thing, purchasing a NAS to aviod the 10 system limit of XP. But the free NAS Intrigues me.



Rick, doesn't this mean that you could set up to share with freeNAS all on virualization? And have a virtual shared drive to bypass the 10 system limit? I was downloading Fedora Core 6 to try setting up a virtual linex server. But if a little freeNAS "drive" would work that would probably be waaay better.

Also downloaded and got play with vista!

Virtualization is toooo fun!

-Ethan

Yes - FreeNAs does bypass the 10 concurrent connection limit for Microsoft Workgroups.

You could easily set up FreeNas with enough disk space for the current renders, Just copy completeed renders from FreeNas out to the final render storage location at a later time.

Richard Harrowell.

Sam,
What kind of interface does the D-link machine have?
Thanks,
David

Its a browser based interface - that looks just like the interface for d-links routers.
It makes setting up the device rather easy - the FTP side as well as managing who has access to what folders. I also like the fact that it has 2 usb2.0 slots so that I can connect usb drives.

I hope this helps you. - I thought this was a simpler cheaper solution.

sam