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Render Pools

Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2017 9:47 am
by timurhai
It seems that it is one of the most popular feature requests.
Different studios (admins, TDs) can have own opinion on this issue.

What is Render Pool?
What is the main difference from farm setup, where different hosts take abilities according to host name mask?
May be just show farm setup groups in GUIs somehow?
May be just add some more features to that groups and call them 'Pools'?

Or we can create a totally new object in Afanasy "Render Pool".
So we should discuss what properties it should have and how to setup it.

Re: Render Pools

Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2017 11:32 am
by selsner
For us I don't see any benefit right now from adding this. I guess it makes only sense if there is no name pattern to a group of machines. For this we could just add a new config item "hostlist" to the farm.json like:

Code: Select all

{
    "name":"stations",
    "hostlist":["stationa", "stationb", "stationc"]
    "description":"Workstations",
    "capacity":1100,
    "maxtasks":10,
    "power":1000,
}
host list could be additional to "mask" or used standalone.

Re: Render Pools

Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2017 9:24 am
by timurhai
Hi.
The same i can do with a mask parameter, which already exists:

Code: Select all

"mask":"stationa|stationb|stationc"
or:

Code: Select all

"mask":"station[a|b|c]"

Re: Render Pools

Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2017 11:31 am
by selsner
Indeed, so I don't see a benefit. What is the resoning of people requesting this?

Re: Render Pools

Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2017 12:10 pm
by timurhai
I agree that some "Render Pools" are needed.
But for now i did not think them up.
So i want to listen to people, again, here, collect information from all in one place.

For now if we want to assign a job to some group of renders, we can do it only via job hosts mask.
But sometimes hosts mask is complex is not useful.
We already use regular expressions in a farm setup, there we can assign machines to some pools and later specify that pools (not regular expressions again).
And if GUIs can visualize that Pools somehow, it can help render artists.

Also it will be more useful if we can assign job to several pools with different priorities.
- but this is a more complex question.

Re: Render Pools

Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2017 12:14 pm
by lithorus
Coming from RR with it's pool/group setup I absolutely love the more dynamic nature of afanasy.

IMHO thinking in "Render Pools" is an old way of managing it, whereas services, capacity, licenses and power is much better.

Another option is to autogenerate capacity and power.

Eg.
capacity = memory
power = corecount * Mhz

Re: Render Pools

Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2017 12:18 pm
by selsner
ok, yes, then it could make sense to have a

{"farmname_mask": "myfarm" }

parameter on the job, that is used when solving. I see how this can be helpful. The concept is much easier to grasp for normal artists.

Re: Render Pools

Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2017 12:26 pm
by timurhai
We can just add "Pools", other things will be not touchable ))
At least i think we should visualize farm setup groups (patterns) in GUI somehow.

btw
I have not practice forums before. There is so much settings in this forum engine, for now i am not much familiar with it, sorry.
I just moved lithorus and selsner from "Newly registered users" to "Registered users".
Now you can post w/o approval.
Can you check it, please?

ps
W/O posts approval at all we see porno spam here ))

Re: Render Pools

Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2017 12:32 pm
by selsner
Works for me!

I think

{"farm_name_mask": "myfarm" }

job parameter has the least impact on the server code and the most positive effect for beginning users. Its just an alternative to the hostmask parm and may be used together or standalon. GUIs will then just show it next to the hostmask of a job.

Re: Render Pools

Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2017 12:58 pm
by timurhai
If create some Pools, lets create a useful Pools!

We can also make use it to split farm between departments and projects.
If we add a some job "Pools" too (along with render pools).
If we add priorities to such pools, we can adjust projects priorities (give some project more hosts).