Hi guys, back in italy I have 4 pc with 6 GPU’s each.
How can I use them all for rendering ?
Thank you !
I’ll have a look ! thank you
1 Like
Isn’t what I was looking for
So I take it your not in Italy, these machines really are remote with no direct physical access?
If so, then its a 2 phase issue. Assuming they are all at the same location, connected to the same network and have basically direct access to each other, then the first thing you need is a remote connection to them.
Doing that depends on a few things, what OS, how they are connected to the internet and the speed of that connection and if they are always turned on.
In basic terms, you want the following:
- A secure VPN connection to those computers, either directly to one PC, which then has access to the others. Or, to the network modem or router that they are all connected too.
Your basic goal is to connect your PC, securely, to the same local network that those are, its as if all of them where sitting next to each other, plugged into the same network switch. Only difference is one happens to be 1,10,1000’s of kilometers away and the connection is done via the Internet.
-
Once connected, you then likely need some sort of remote desktop control software. If they are all Windows PC’s, you could just use RDP, which with permissions configured on each of the PC’s, would let you ‘login’ and pull up the desktop of each PC. If they are Linux, then you may need different software, like VNC or the ability to install RDP support.
-
Once you have remote connection and login to each PC, then as already stated, you would install Blender, along with Flamenco or something much likely it and configure it all to work together.
-
At which point if you say used your PC as the master control, it would then submit the jobs to the other PC’s (over the Internet, which is where your Internet speed comes into it) and save out each rendered image to a central location, but it a hard drive on one of the PC’s or even cloud storage.
The one thing that should be very clear, is you will need someone that has physical access to those PC’s in order to install and setup the VPN system and the remote desktop software. Then you could do all the Blender stuff.
1 Like
And once you have you have the remote desktop/VPN set up, BE CAREFUL WITH IT. Opening up your computers like that to internet traffic is extremely dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s much safer to keep a render farm constrained to a local area network, but it doesn’t seem like that’s an option in this case. OP, you better trust whoever in Italy is setting up the physical side of this with your life. Like, you should trust this person more than you trust your religious leader or your significant other
Well yes. I mean technically if Windows you could just enable RDP and off you go.
That would of course be TOTALLY INSANE, given that RDP isn’t actually secure and one would likely be hacked in no time.
As such, you need the VPN setup, to create a single encrypted communication tunnel between your PC and the others. Of course at the same time, get it wrong, set it up incorrectly and again, bi potential security holes and once again, your hacked.
So yes, OP needs to be careful.
1 Like
Thanks for the replies guys, really appreaciate.
I’m in the UK, the machines are in Italy, but someone mentioned that the cpu’s are pretty bad anyways, I just did a test with one render and was a failure, thank you all again !
The CPU’s or the GPU’s. If its the CPU then for the most part that doesn’t matter too much, since ideally you want to render via GPU anyway.
However, if its the GPU’s that are old and slow, then yeah, likely not worth the hassle.
OP posted in another thread that he has 6 x 3070 and an i3 CPU.
I don’t think doing scene preprocessing with bigger projects on a 2-core i3 is a good idea performance-wise.
1 Like
Yeah, an i3 isn’t ideal, especially if it isn’t a recent core design. Mind you, the 3070 only has 8GB VRAM, so if the projects are too big, they may not fit in the GPU anyway. Of course in theory, if its rendering an animation, then persistent data may help after the first pre-processing.
If does all fit in 8GB VRAM, then bit of a shame to waste 6 x 3070 GPU’s (he says still trying to get by with a 1070Ti).
Yeah the gpu’s are the only valuable thing on those machines, they are mining rigs, but I thought when not mining to use them as render farms, but cpu and ram are low and terrible.