[Beowulf] Newbie Question: Racks versus boxes and good rack solutions for commodity hardware

[arjuna]

The Helmer used Plexi glass rather than aluminum to sit the mother boards
on. Plexiglass is both cheap, and i would think, insulated and firesafe...

On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 12:29 PM, arjuna <brahmaforces at gmail.com> wrote:

> Peter:
>
> Thats amazing and insprational:
>
> Vincent, this would address your concern about beowulf for animation
> rendering and also cost...
>
> On Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 9:40 PM, Peter Brady <petertbrady at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> If you're interested in do it yourself clustering for rendering
>> purposes you may want to check this out: http://helmer.sfe.se/.
>>
>> On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 10:47 AM, Dmitri Chubarov
>> <dmitri.chubarov at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Hello,
>> >
>> > my first reply missed the list by mistake so I will repeat a few points
>> that
>> > I mentioned there.
>> >
>> >>
>> >> What is 1u?
>> >>
>> >> What is a blade system?
>> >
>> > Compute clusters are often built of rack-server hardware meaning boxes
>> > different from desktop boxes and chipset that have features not
>> necessary
>> > for desktop PCs like ECC memory, redundant power supply units,
>> integrated
>> > management processors, RAID controllers, that altogether provide better
>> > reliability, since the failure rate for a cluster of a 100 nodes is 100
>> > times higher than for a single node. You may not need any of it for a 16
>> > node rendering farm.
>> >
>> >> Anyone using clusters for animation on this list?
>> >
>> > We are just writing up on a research project on distributed rendering.
>> > Rendering is the part in the animation process that requires the most
>> > processing power. We used 3dStudio Max (3DS) for modelling and V-Ray for
>> > rendering. 3DS has its own utility, called Backburner, for distributing
>> > frames among a number of  cluster nodes.
>> >
>> > We observed that V-Ray failed on some certain frames thus stopping the
>> whole
>> > rendering queue, therefore the process was not completely automated.
>> >
>> > I would also repeat that a storage subsystem that uses an array of disks
>> is
>> > essential for performance.
>> >>
>> >> At this time I am trying to figure out the racks. Am meeting the
>> hardware
>> >> guy on Saturday and we were thinking of opening up the PCS i have lying
>> >> around and taking measurements of how the mother boards fit into the
>> >> cases,with the intention of creating a rack from scratch. Any ideas of
>> what
>> >> goes into a good rack in terms of size and matieral (assuming it has to
>> be
>> >> insulated)
>> >
>> > This sort of rack is more of a research project. On the contrary, the
>> usual
>> > kind of rack is an IEC standard server rack,
>> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19_inch_rack
>> >
>> >>
>> >> Am planning to run animation software (like blender) on it. Since
>> >> animation software requires large processing power i am assuming they
>> have
>> >> already worked on parrallelizing the code...
>> >
>> >
>> > Blender does not seem to have a driver to distribute rendering (I might
>> be
>> > wrong) but it can generate PovRay scripts and povray can make use of
>> > parallel processing in a number of ways.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
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>> > To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit
>> > http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
>> >
>> >
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Best regards,
> arjuna
> http://www.brahmaforces.com
>



-- 
Best regards,
arjuna
http://www.brahmaforces.com
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