Forever Alone Filmmaking Render farm options 2012
On the last episode of the Forever Alone Filmmaking Podcast Jimmy and I were discussing render farm options for the solo cg filmmaker... up until this point we've both used our own little in house render setups- we both have four machine setups-
Once you've paid for the hardware the main expense for an in house render farm is power- as with everything else controlled by private companies power is getting more expensive-
My render nodes are Q9300's which are sort of old and slow compared to newer options as each box only provides a 2.91 on the Cinebench 11.5 CPU benchmark
If I run my render nodes 24/7 they'll add $250- $350 to the monthly power bill- so I don't run them 24/7- I have to avoid "peak usage hours" as the power company charges 2-6x the amount for the same power during those times... peak usage is 11am - 6pm in my area...
From my perspective we have 4 basic choices... I've only used the first option but I've been researching the others- if you have any experience with the other options please post your thoughts in the comments and I'll add them to this post
Build, maintain and run your own in house render farm
Utilize a commercial online render farm
Use Amazon EC2 to setup and run your own online render farm
Rent a dedicated online server and use it as an online render node
Build, maintain and run your own in house render farm
Pros- File transfer speed extremely fast, so you can start rendering shots faster and when the shots are done you can transfer quickly as everything is on your local network
Cons- You have to pay for the power which can get quite expensive, you have to deal with the heat and noise generated, you must maintain, troubleshoot and fix any problems, if you don't have fast computers it can take a long time to finish rendering each shot
User experiences: Other than the rising power costs this is the most convenient option IF you already own the hardware-granted they do generate a fair amount of heat and noise
Utilize a commercial online render farm
Pros- can access a lot of computing power- finishing shots faster- someone else maintains the computers so you don't have to worry about that
Cons- Can get really expensive, they may not have all the plugins you use- speed at which you can upload shots and download finished files limited by the speed of your internet connection so it can be slowish
User experiences: It seems there's a few commercial render farms that get good reviews, if you've used any please post your thoughts in the comments
Use Amazon EC2 to setup and run your own online render farm
Pros- can access a lot of computing power, cheaper than using a commercial online render farm, scalable
Cons- can be complicated to setup and maintain, can get really expensive, speed at which you can upload shots and download finished files limited by the speed of your internet connection so it can be slowish
User experiences: In regard to Cinema 4d usage I found this thread with some users experience
Rent a dedicated online server and use it as an online render node
Pros- Cheap compared to the other options if you don't already own the hardware, someone else maintains the system, you don't have to deal with the noise and heat generated, simple to setup/maintain compared to the EC2 option
Cons- Slower to render if renting a single server, speed at which you can upload shots and download finished files limited by the speed of your internet connection so it can be slowish
User experiences: I couldn't find any reference to these being used for c4d net render but this place seems like a pretty good deal -that one server will render faster than my in house render farm and for roughly $250 for the first month +$140 each additional month it seems like a pretty good deal taking into account the cost of power for an in house farm
If you have any experience with any of those options OR know of some other options please let me know in the comments and I'll add them to the post thanks!
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