Home Render Farm for Blender

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In this article, I will describe how to set up a home render farm for Blender. The core of our farm will be Flamenco — an open-source, cross-platform framework for monitoring and managing render jobs.

The framework consists of three components:

  • Flamenco Add-on

  • Flamenco Manager

  • Flamenco Workers

The add-on connects Blender to Flamenco. The Manager distributes jobs between Workers and provides a web interface for controlling the entire process. The Workers are the ones that actually perform the rendering. Flamenco can also be used on a single machine: this won’t increase render speed, but it does improve convenience.

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In my opinion, Flamenco is a clearly underrated piece of software that deserves more attention from users. It is quick to deploy, does not require complex infrastructure, and at the same time offers functionality comparable to commercial solutions. For small studios and enthusiasts, it’s an excellent way to organize distributed rendering without extra costs or dependence on third-party services.

To build a full render farm, you will need:

  • 2 or more computers;

  • Blender;

  • Flamenco;

  • a shared network directory;

  • Tailscale — optional, if you don’t want to be limited to a local network.

For a minimal setup, a single PC with Blender and Flamenco installed is enough. In this case, one machine will act as both Manager and Worker.

Let’s start with the setup. I will be using Arch Linux, however Flamenco also supports Windows and macOS.

1. Installing Tailscale

First, we need Tailscale — it will allow us to connect all farm computers into a single virtual network and access the farm from outside the local network.

Tailscale does not require complex VPN configuration, port forwarding, or a dedicated server. After installation, all machines receive a Tailscale IP and can see each other as if they were on the same local network.

Install Tailscale on all farm machines:

sudo pacman -S tailscale
sudo systemctl enable --now tailscaled
sudo tailscale up

After running tailscale up, a browser will open where you need to authenticate via Google, GitHub, or another supported method.

On a headless server, you can authenticate via SSH using an auth key from the Tailscale admin panel:

tailscale up --authkey=tskey-KEY

In my configuration:

  • 16p acts as the Manager;

  • m900 acts as a Worker and an NFS server.

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After that, make sure the machines can ping each other using their Tailscale IPs — these addresses will be required later when configuring NFS and Flamenco.

ping m900

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2. Setting up the NFS Share

Any computer can act as the NFS server. In my case, it’s the Worker m900.

Install nfs-utils and start the service:

sudo pacman -S nfs-utils
sudo systemctl enable --now nfs-server

Normally this is sufficient, but in my case the filesystem is ZFS, so I additionally enable sharenfs for the dataset that will host the share and start the corresponding service:

zfs set sharenfs=on zroot/data/tank
sudo systemctl enable --now zfs-share.service

Create a directory for the share:

mkdir -p ~/data/tmp/nfs_flamenco

Important: the path to the shared directory must be identical on all machines, otherwise Blender and Flamenco won’t be able to locate files correctly.

Now return to the Manager (16p), install the NFS client, and mount the share:

sudo pacman -S nfs-utils
mkdir -p ~/data/tmp/nfs_flamenco
sudo mount -t nfs m900:$HOME/data/tmp/nfs_flamenco $HOME/data/tmp/nfs_flamenco

Verify that the share is mounted successfully:

mount | grep nfs

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3. Installing Blender and Flamenco

Next, perform the following steps:

  • install Blender and Flamenco on all machines (installation paths must match). Both are available in the Arch Linux repositories, but I use alpha versions, so I download them from the official websites.

  • start flamenco-worker on m900 and 16p. Use the -manager parameter to specify the Manager’s Tailscale IP:

flamenco-worker -manager http://100.90.50.50:8080

  • start flamenco-manager on 16p.

After starting the Manager, a web browser will automatically open with the initial Flamenco setup wizard. There you will need to specify:

  • the path to Blender;

  • the path to Flamenco;

  • the path to the shared network directory.

After that, the wizard will prompt you to install the Blender add-on. Install it, and your farm is ready to use.

Save your Blender project in the shared directory and submit it for rendering via the Flamenco Panel in the Output Properties section.

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4. After Installation

The farm is now operational, and you can move on to basic automation. Below are examples of systemd services for running Flamenco, automatic NFS mounting via fstab, and NetworkManager configuration for proper interaction with Tailscale.

Flamenco Worker Service

/etc/systemd/system/flamenco-worker.service

[Unit]
Description=Flamenco Worker connecting to Manager on localhost
Documentation=https://100.90.50.50:8080/
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
CPUSchedulingPolicy=idle
Nice=19

WorkingDirectory=/home/snark/data/soft/flamenco_beta
# Tell the Worker that it should exit with status code 47 in order to restart.
ExecStart=/home/snark/data/soft/flamenco_beta/flamenco-worker -manager http://100.90.50.50:8080/ -restart-exit-code 47

User=snark

# Make systemd restart the service on exit code 47, as well as
# 'failure' codes (such as hard crashes).
RestartForceExitStatus=47
Restart=on-failure

EnvironmentFile=-/etc/default/locale

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Flamenco Manager Service

/etc/systemd/system/flamenco-manager.service

[Unit]
Description=Flamenco Manager service
After=network.target

[Service]
User=snark
WorkingDirectory=/home/snark/data/soft/flamenco_beta
ExecStart=/home/snark/data/soft/flamenco_beta/flamenco-manager
Restart=always
RestartSec=5s

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

NetworkManager Configuration for Tailscale

To prevent NetworkManager from trying to manage the Tailscale interface, add the following file:

/etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/99-tailscale.conf

[keyfile]
unmanaged-devices=interface-name:tailscale0

Mounting NFS via fstab

/etc/fstab

m900:/home/snark/data/tmp/nfs_flamenco /home/snark/data/tmp/nfs_flamenco nfs rw,relatime,vers=3,rsize=1048576,wsize=1048576,namlen=255,hard,fatal_neterrors=none,proto=tcp,timeo=600,retrans=2,sec=sys,_netdev,x-systemd.automount,nofail 0 0

The options nofail, _netdev, and x-systemd.automount help avoid boot-time issues if the network or NFS server is temporarily unavailable. All other options are standard — at least, these were automatically set by NFS on my system during the first manual mount.

5. Useful Materials and Links

Examples of my work rendered with Flamenco

Flamenco (official documentation)

Arch Linux Wiki — Tailscale

Arch Linux Wiki — NFS

Arch Linux Wiki — systemd

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Scooter Vespa Rally 200
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Nicely done! Flamenco really is very nice to work with! :+1:

1 Like