Lovenote Digital 20 processor render farm - "Dashcat2"

[Geoxile]

So what keeps you from using a mainstream desktop CPU?

[redbook5544332211]

Could you please put up a tutorial because I do 3d animating and thise would really help

[94thts]

How much faster does it render than say a regular high end desktop? :)

[LovenoteDigital]

@94thts

The render speed of the whole thing is about the same as two fully decked out Mac Pro machines. This is on six year old technology, though.

[cepomwa]

How do you do for the electricity bill? =)

[LovenoteDigital]

@cepomwa - It's not bad in Winter here, but I fear summer time.

[compdude47]

@LovenoteDigital I imagine you don't have to turn the heat on in Winter :D

[engineerisaac]

beacuse its a render farm you should install deepfreeze to each node so you can just cut the power and a image will restore on boot.

[LovenoteDigital]

@engineerisaac - I had never even heard of deepfreeze before you mentioned it. I'm going to have to look into this. Thanks for the tip.

[DVmaker]

How's the project coming? Any new Updates? What OS have you decided on?

[LovenoteDigital]

@DVmaker - I'm at kind of a standstill since Winter hit here in Utah. While I've been able to work on some of the software side of things, the hardware is stuck in place until the ground thaws since I bought a second shed to house the render farm and need to run electrical service and data lines to it. Waiting really is the hardest part right now.

[DVmaker]

How's the project coming?

[SolitudeMyGuide]

Those are some good-looking rackmount chassis! What brand and model are they? I've googled, but failed to find them or something similar. Nice setup!

[LovenoteDigital]

@SolitudeMyGuide - Thanks. They're custom units made for Linux NetworX by CalPC. The only difference, to my knowledge, is the faceplate vent pattern. They use the same handles as the CalPC standard cases. Sure has been a bear getting handles ordered for my cases, though.

[lenoat702]

what do you do if you have a leak in the shead?

[LovenoteDigital]

@lenoat702 - If you mean rainwater leaking through the roof, it's very unlikely. The roof is shingled and has a barrier sheet in place between the shingles and the roof plywood. It's really no different from any other residential building in that respect.  If you mean a flood, the water would have to reach a depth of 8" on the surrounding land before spillover would occur and then a further four inches before reaching the bottom space of the server rack. We're on a slight incline.

[NeverContactMe]

That seems very costly.

[LovenoteDigital]

@NeverContactMe - Most hobbies are.

[KevinLounsberry]

@LovenoteDigital an unfortunate fact

[RAVENyeahLikeInBIRD]

What is that ice box thing? I'm trying to find a good way to turn on and shut down my servers. I was thinking about doing in remotely over WakeOnLan, but that seemed to much of a hassle. Could you provide me with a link to this type of hardware? Is it easy to set up?

Best regards

Christian

[LovenoteDigital]

@RAVENyeahLikeInBIRD - Icebox is entirely proprietary and hard to get ahold of. A good remote power on/off solution is the AP9211 from APC as long as you have the SNMP module in it. Way cheaper than any Icebox that's been on eBay in the last six months.

[movies1239]

How fast can you render 1080p 200MB videos using AE or Vegas Pro 9/10?

[LovenoteDigital]

@movies1239 - Buy me the licenses and I'll find out. ;)

I don't use either of those.

[movies1239]

@LovenoteDigital Or you can just get a cracked version =D!

[LovenoteDigital]

@movies1239 - Nah. The only crack in my shop is the one in my fat ass.

[VyTe86]

omg what cost this thing ^^

[LovenoteDigital]

@VyTe86 - About $3000 and a lot of hard work.

[thecolabaron]

@LovenoteDigital

Only 3000? I am going to invest in one of these, does it make your powerbill jump much?

[LovenoteDigital]

@thecolabaron - The $3000 figure came from being lucky and using older hardware. The tech is from 2005, but my intent was to build something I could upgrade easily with new gear once I learned how to use it.

Based on my calculations, when running at full load, the whole rig will draw about 2600 watts. I pay $.12 per kWh for electricity so i costs me about $.31 per hour to run this. That's part of the reason why I have it set up to shut off compute nodes I don't need.

[bobyo134]

what is the model number on the mobo , and who makes it , i must say great job looks nice i hope u get your funds soon can't wait to see it when it's done

[LovenoteDigital]

@bobyo134 - It's the semi-famous HDAMA from Arima/Rioworks/Accelertech.  Only certain revisions of the board will work with dual-core CPUs, but I lucked out there and got way more than I needed.

[bobyo134]

@LovenoteDigital are you saying that you have extra's that u would be willing to get rid of ?

[LovenoteDigital]

@bobyo134 - If by "get rid of" you mean "sell", yes. I was going to make a horizontal mini cluster and I still have the aluminum node trays, DC-capable motherboards and special heatpipes that project required for that rig. I believe I have 1U power supplies, too. It's all a matter of how serious any potential buyer of this gear actually is about learning this stuff since it's a whole new ballgame, as I found. Desktop machines are toys compared to a cluster.

[praetormarching]

Oh...the other thing is DON'T PUT STUFF in front of your half height rack of "Books" (that's what we called them). They will overheat. They work alot like blades and require a hot/cold isle in a datacenter. One of the reasons why LNXI scrapped the design.

[LovenoteDigital]

@praetormarching - I had figured that was the case. It's good to get confirmation there. I never ran the small cluster. The Supermicro P4DPR-IGM motherboards had the LinuxBIOS and were only 32-bit Xeons so I pulled those and modified the cases to take the same Opteron motherboards as in my large cluster. I re-arranged my workshop shortly after I shot the video so those intakes are uncovered. How were the hard drives mounted in those blades? They seem to need a bracket.

[praetormarching]

Sadly the Like button only works once. I was a field engineer for Linux Networx and I'm VERY, VERY familiar with what you have. So if you have questions or need advise, definitely contact me! There are only 2 issues I see with what your doing. 1) your head node should be running Linux (the control software, called ClusterWorx that integrates with the ice box doesn't run under Windows). The other issue is LNXI made a power distribution unit that integrates with iceboxes.

[LovenoteDigital]

@praetormarching - Wow. I never thought I'd hear from a former LNXI employee. I may well have to keep in touch since some of it is still mysterious to me, the pinout of the RS-232 DB-9 to 8P8C cables, for one. I'm not sure if they adhere to any standard. To address the issues you saw: 1. I don't have Clusterworx (I'm sure it's insanely expensive) so I use the Icebox CLI via telnet to control the machines. 2. I don't have a PDU so I just use standard thick power cables. I plan to add UPSes.

[praetormarching]

Sadly, the like button only works once. I worked for Linux Networx before they were bought by SGI as a field integration engineer! If you need advise or hardware specs - contact me! However - Windows XP doesn't work well with them. Your head node needs to run Linux because the control software the drives the Ice Box only runs on it (it's called ClusterWorx). I'm incredibly familiar with what you have.

[LauxHawk]

Excellent. Can you give a demonstration when you are done?

[LovenoteDigital]

@LauxHawk

Definitely. I've been working on a different project recently so the farm has been sitting. I've still got to get an LCD console and a pair of battery backups so there will be a delay while I gather the funds for that, but I'll be posting more as soon as I make changes. You may notice in later videos that the workshop where I keep all of this will change quite a bit. It's an ongoing project of mine to get the workshop completely ready before the first snow here.

[LauxHawk]

@LovenoteDigital I will stay up to date.

[perpetualjon]

Thx for posting video! Much better than the pics to get and idea of the size of everything.

[Insomnibyte]

Very nice work so far bro. Looken good!