Indigo Network Rendering onto a Server - HELP

[JackDamnGood]

Hi all,

I work at a design company, and we are currently looking for a way to optimize and improve our rendering capabilities without it effecting the rest of the networks performance, currently when rendering in Indigo, it slows down the server, which in turn slows down the entire company network, I have started looking into dedicated servers PURELY for rendering, but before I started looking, I thought it would be best to ask here for your recommendations, and any requirements there may be.

If you need me to provide any further details I am more than happy to do so.

Kind Regards,
Jack

[lycium]

Hi Jack,

when you say the server, I assume you mean the Network Manager and not the Render master, correct? If so, you won't really need a beefy CPU, just something fast enough to handle gigabit traffic. The network bandwidth is the primary constraint here it seems, and so having a gigabit router is tremendously beneficial.

Any further info is definitely helpful

[JackDamnGood]

To be honest with you, I'm relatively new to all of this, so I don't actually know! , basically what I am looking to do, is relieve the stress on the current server we have, by running the design computers from another server when rendering, So I would have my Mac connected to another server when performing a render, I ASSUME that it will be the "slave" as I think it's called.

Would this work?

Sorry for my lack of knowledge, Many Thanks

Kind Regards,

Jack

[lycium]

Ok, I think I understand the problem better now Basically, it's the rendering on your network server which is causing the network to slow down, correct?

In this case yes, having a dedicated server for the rendering would be a good idea. For hardware suggestions, right now I would recommend an Intel i7 processor, with a good amount of memory, perhaps 8GB. The rest is quite variable, and depends largely on your budget. Please let me know if you need more specific info than this!

[JackDamnGood]

Thank you for your help, we have been recommended by Apple themselves to replace the current server and use the old one for rendering, whilst using the new one to replace the previous server's role. The current server specifications we run are a X-Serve 2.26GHz Quad Core Intel Xeon ZX, with 3GB of RAM, If you could please provide suggestions on what the best solution would be to our issues, (Please if possible suggest a variation).

Many Thanks for your help, much appreciated.
Jack

[lycium]

I would suggest doing it the other way around: keep that server-oriented hardware as a server, and obtain a new machine for rendering (since the newer CPU will work very well for this purpose, and would be under-utilised doing only networking tasks).

Having a look at Apple's website, I'd suggest one of their Mac Pro computers: http://www.apple.com/macpro/

The basic Quad Core offering will already provide high performance, however I would strongly suggest upgrading its memory to 6GB from 3GB. The 8-core variant could be described as "ludicrously fast", and would be an extremely powerful machine for running Indigo.