DR over VLAN

[Nejc Kilar]

Hello guys,

this might be a bit of a weird one (I've been saying this a lot lately) but has any one of you experience setting up a DR system over the internet? I am mostly curious about if the darn thing even works?

The idea is to have it be running when rendering out final frames, a time where upload / download times don't really matter that much (the minimum connection speed of the server would be 80/6).

Anyone tried anything something similar and would be willing to share his experiences?

~ sets up a camp fire ~

[rambambulli]

I use it on a VPN connection. That works fine.  Is that what you mean?

[Nejc Kilar]

I use it on a VPN connection. That works fine.  Is that what you mean?

VPN, Virtual LAN and all the similar stuff yes :)

So, I presume you are experiencing no problems at all?

[rambambulli]

No problems at all. As I mentioned I use a VPN. I have no experience with other setups.

Finding external DR nodes from my companies' network works not as fast as finding DR nodes within the company network from my for instance my home PC. I don't think this has anything to do with Corona BTW. Is due our network setup that computers on the other side of the firewall are somehow harder to find.

My companies' network and my home network are connected to a 100Mbit up and down glassfiber network. I you have a slower connection you might experience may a delay. If you change the refresh rate than (I think) this also will work fine.

[Nejc Kilar]

Awesome, I really appreciate your opinion. I've been very hesitant to get this type of DR going but since you aren't experiencing any ground braking errors it seems like it's a pretty solid setup.

Thanks good Sir!

[Nejc Kilar]

Hello again,

Just a quick follow up question regarding this topic. Does running DR over VLAN over a 100mbit fiber line work fast enough to allow for constant usage and not just for final frame rendering? I am asking this because doing the math something like a 300mbit internet connection should be way better.

Anyone care to share? :)

[FrostKiwi]

Hello again,

Just a quick follow up question regarding this topic. Does running DR over VLAN over a 100mbit fiber line work fast enough to allow for constant usage and not just for final frame rendering? I am asking this because doing the math something like a 300mbit internet connection should be way better.

Anyone care to share? :)

I have a couple of PC's networked through Hamachi across the City for render,pcs owned by friends, family etc.( I upgrade their ram, I get automatic processing power with their strongest PC they own.)

Bandwidth is usually not an issue on LAN, once you go through your ISP things change however. If it is truly 100mbit fiber you are in the green. Latency does not matter and 100mbit is more than enough, provided the you don't have a problem with a short wait time for render startup.
With 1gb of textures on 100mbit it's 80secs to download textures + 10 seconds for your 125mb scene file + 10 secs to launch the render PER NODE!
however! Are you really sure the connection is symmetrical?
Usually where I live it's 100mbit down and fuck you 5mbit  up. Meaning you send data at 1/20 of the speed and the 80secs become 80*20=26min

So make sure that A, you can send data fast enough and B the Node can receive Data at least as fast as it sends it, or you shall feel painfully slow start to render times.

I myself am blessed with shitty 5mbit up speed and rely on Hamachi's network traffic compression. One more problem being, that backburner does not assign frame ranges to nodes if render time per frame is more than 60s and the frame upload from my ghetto "nodes" takes 60s as well. Meaning for 60s back burner does not assign a new frame and the node just idles for a minute -.- ) not a problem with coronaDr though.

Edit: why fold for cancer research when you can enslave yourself for my render farm? Muhahahahaha

[maru]

Edit: why fold for cancer research when you can enslave yourself for my render farm? Muhahahahaha

Are you planning to start selling their hamachi ids? ;)

[Nejc Kilar]

@SairesArt

Well thanks again, that was super useful to read! Actually the plan is to eventually go 200/200mbit on fiber but right now the 100mbit option appears to be the more realistic one.

Basically what you said makes sense, that it takes about 80 seconds to launch the render on the render node, but what we would ideally be aiming for is to have the ability to do fast region renders as well (think of it like your normal in office DR). For final frames it really doesn't matter if we need to wait 80 seconds or 10 minutes because the sheer computer power would make a difference despite a slower start up time.

What I get from all of this that it is definitely doable but with a few downsides. I totally get your drift about 100/5 connections, they are cool if you need to download stuff but very uncool if you need to upload a bunch of stuff as well. Laughed hard on how you explained it though :)

It would appear you are starting yourself a little net of enslaved PCs to me :P Hah! I am trying to do the same ;)

[FrostKiwi]

but what we would ideally be aiming for is to have the ability to do fast region renders as well

That could become an issue.
Answer two questions for yourself.
Is the office OK with having their internet speed killed for X amount of time each time a render starts?
Look at what scene you currently work with and add up all texture info + max filesize + whatever else data for render and calculate whether the time of delay ( internet speed / 8 / filesizes ) is acceptable or not to you for region render. (Personally I would hate to wait even 20 secs for a region preview)
Then decide what you wanna do.
Final frame render will obviously work great, you may want to throttle internet connection of those not to eat up bandwidth for the rest of the office.

Lastly there is a way to precache textures, so they wouldn't have to download each time you press render. That however is more work than it's worth. Even the workaround server cache tricks, like having a dropbox esc sync directory can create problems on multitude of points, not worth the hassle.

[Nejc Kilar]

Well I figured that for filesizes of around 200mb it might be able to work but anything beyond that... I think Juraj mentioned that even 200/200mbit might be too slow for establishing a reliable pipeline when it comes to using it for region renders and fast previews. Getting people cutoff from the internet isn't that big of an issue since we don't have that many people and some of us work in different timezones which is also why we are looking into  these types of solutions - also, fiber is usually a good sport as long you have a mbit or two to spare.

You raise a really valid point and I'm glad you are pointing these issues out since apparently you have a lot of experience with it.

When it comes to precaching, I was thinking about looking into the dropbox sync and how that could help. You mentioned it can be super problematic in terms of it being reliable?

[FrostKiwi]

When it comes to precaching, I was thinking about looking into the dropbox sync and how that could help. You mentioned it can be super problematic in terms of it being reliable?

No Dropbox sync is a terrible idea :D
usually you setup a windows ftp server and make you textures network share the ftp folder itself, then you get a whatever sync free ware, that non stop downlaods from that folder. This way every second the node checks to see if there is a new texture. Then you point the textures in 3dsmax to be relative, not absolute.

That will always give you textures on the node without redownload, only thing obviously being the .max file, that will be downloaded each time you press render.

I see it from a reliability standpoint. You are usually near a deadline and silly rights management issue, or 3dsmax defaulting to something, or the node doing x or or or. It is not a bulletproof method.
IMO more hassle, than it's worth.

[Nejc Kilar]

SairesArt, this is seriously helpful man! I owe you like a meal or something... :)

To further complicate things we are using a 3ds max / c4d type of pipeline (depending on the project and the people working) but until the c4d version gets Team Render we don't really need to invest many thoughts into that.

So, on a 200mbit symmetrical fiber line there is very little chance to make it usable in terms of having the render power for fast previews?