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- Make a JSON file to list the computers/servers to be included in one or more collectives;
- Inform 3Delight of the location of that file through the 3delight.config file;
- Run a small "service" program (or a daemon in Linux) on each computer that is part of the collectives.
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It is only a matter of listing computers and associating them with a name. Lets make an example of defining the following 5 collectives in a hypothetical production facility:
Rackmount-1 — The 1 → The servers located in rack number 1.
Rackmount-2 — The → The servers located in rack number 2.
Lighter-A — A → A group of servers you want to dedicate to lighter A.
Lighter-B — A → A group of servers you want to dedicate fo lighter B.
All-servers — → All the servers.
Assuming the facility has 10 servers, named server01 to server10, here is how to build the JSON file for the above 5 collectives:
{"Rackmount-1" : [ "server01", "server02", "server03", "server04", "server05" ],"Rackmount-2" : [ "server06", "server07", "server08", "server09", "server10" ],"Lighter-A" : [ "server01,16", "server02,16", "server03,16" ],"Lighter-B" : [ "server04,16", "server05,16", "server06,16" ],"All-servers" : [ "server01", "server02", "server03", "server04", "server05", "server06", "server07", "server08", "server09", "server10" ]} |
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A lightweight "service" program (or daemon in Linux) need to be installed on each machine computers that is part of a collective. For that, run the following command on each of these computers:
On Windows:
C:\> collective -installservice
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% sudo mv /Applications/3Delight/com.3delight.collective.plist /Library/LaunchDaemons/ ← to launch the license server when the system is started.
On Linux:
3Delight includes script that will start the collective service automatically on your render servers. After installing 3Delight on the render server:
% sudo cp $DELIGHT/bin/collective /etc/rc.d/init.
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d/
The service will then automatically run at boot time. Note that some linux systems do not have the "rc.d" directory and the proper command is:
% sudo cp $DELIGHT/bin/collective /etc/init.d/
Additional Notes
- A server/computer can be part of one or more collectives. As is the case in the example above ("server01" is part of 3 out of the 5 collectives).
- With each server/computer name, you can specify a number of cores, eg. "server01,16". This limits the number of cores that will be used when rendering using this computer by invoking the collective it is part of. If the number is not specified, eg. "server01", then all the cores will be used.