Manual for the new network rendering mechanism

[galinette]

Dear all,

I noticed that you introduced a new network rendering schemes in the last versions of Indigo for windows, with a network service. Would it be possible to have an explanation of the features and how to use it?

Thanks,

Etienne

[StompinTom]

+1. Not completely sure how to set up multiple computers...

(Slightly OT: I seem to remember that the Lifetime licenses also came with a couple render nodes? Or am I on crack? If not, how do I access these?)

[fused]

(Slightly OT: I seem to remember that the Lifetime licenses also came with a couple render nodes? Or am I on crack? If not, how do I access these?)

Check your license link again

[StompinTom]

(Slightly OT: I seem to remember that the Lifetime licenses also came with a couple render nodes? Or am I on crack? If not, how do I access these?)

Check your license link again

Awesome!

[galinette]

There are three new executables : network_manager.exe, network_client_service.exe, network_client_service_manager.exe

But two are crashing and I cannot do anything useful with the third... (And it's not recognising my license)

Etienne

[CTZn]

Hi galinette, StompinTom.

See the 2.4.2 release thread, second part of the first post. Ah, let me paste it here... here's what we have for a manual:

The Network Manager

The network manager does a couple of things:

The network manager can coordinate network rendering, by assigning slaves to masters.
It can be used instead of the old UDP broadcast system. The old UDP system had limitations in that it was difficult to do network renders on computers on a different subnet, unless the master hostname was explicity given on the command line. The new network manager gets around this problem - just configure each copy of Indigo to talk to the network master, and then whenever an indigo starts with network rendering enabled, the network manager will assign any free slaves on the network to that master.

To set up the network manager, first decide which machine you're going to run it on, and then record that machine's DNS hostname.
Then run the network manager on that computer.

Then on every computer you have Indigo running on, go to the install directory, e.g c:\Program Files\Indigo Renderer.
Copy default_settings.xml to settings.xml
Edit settings.xml, change the setting do_master_search_broadcast to false (to disable the UDP searching) and then set the network_manager_hostname value to the hostname you noted down earlier.
Save settings.xml

Then start a render with the network rendering button pressed. That Indigo instance should then show up in the network manager as a master.
Likewise, and slaves started should show up as slaves.


The network manager also does floating network licences, which is a new kind of Indigo licence, meant for

That's we have now for a manual.easy administration of business deployments of 5+ Indigo licences. The floating licences are different from the current licences, so it's not possible to enter you current licence into the network manager.

http://www.indigorenderer.com/forum/vie ... f=1&t=9619

[galinette]

Seems quite interesting and improving the network rendering management.

What about the "service" .exe?


Etienne

[galinette]

I just have one suggestion to make this mechanism perfect : the manager should be controllable via a web client with an embedded http server instead of (or in addition to) the interface.

This would allow the allowed farm users to change the slave/master connections without having physical access to the PC running the manager. Currently the only solution would be to give them remote access to the desktop, but I would prefer not.

Or, an alternate solution without the manager would be to put a small http server in each slave. Then this could be accessed remotely to tell the slave(server) to connect to your workstation on demand. The slave would automatically get the IP of the calling master via the HTTP_HEADERS. And a minimalist interface would tell you whether the slave is idle or not, and who is using it.

Etienne

[Soup]

I thought this was posted somewhere, but here is a more readable version of the text from that thread.