Setting Up Your Network

• 1 Setting Up Your Network
  • 1.1 Rendering Software
  • 1.2 Reference Files - Store On The Network
  • 1.3 Output Files - Save To The Network
  • 1.4 Remote Administration
  • 1.5 Deadline Emails - Setup An SMTP Server
  • 1.6 Slave Machines - Auto Login

This is a list of things that should be taken into consideration before installing Deadline.

Rendering Software

It is recommended that the rendering software (3ds Max, Maya, etc) be installed on all of your slave machines (preferably to the same location on each machine) before attempting to network render through Deadline. This makes configuring the Deadline plugins easier.

In addition, it is recommended that all licensing your rendering software requires be setup before attempting to network render through Deadline. Deadline doesn't handle the licensing of 3rd party rendering software, so you should refer to your rendering software's documentation or contact its support team if you run into issues with licensing.

Reference Files - Store On The Network

It is recommended that all reference files to be used in your scenes be placed on a network share (preferably a server), which can be accessed via a shared (ie: UNC) path or a mapped network drive. This is important for two reasons:

• It ensures that all the slaves in your render farm have access to your reference files.
• It ensures that the slaves use the same version of the reference files that are used in your scene.

When rendering in a mixed OS environment, it is necessary for the shared paths to appear the same on all machines involved. For example, if you have the shared path '\\path\to\share' on your Windows machines, the path '/path/to/share' should exist on your Linux machines. The majority of cross-platform software that Deadline supports can resolve both path formats, allowing you to submit your jobs from either Windows or Linux without any additional work.

Note that scenes can still be created and submitted locally, providing that any references made are to files on the network only.

Output Files - Save To The Network

All output should be saved to a network share as well (preferably a server). This is important because it ensures that all the slaves in your render farm have access to the output path.

Remote Administration

During the Deadline Repository installation, you will be asked if you would like to enable Remote Administration. This feature allows you to control all the slave machines remotely from a single machine, including starting and stopping the slave application, configuring the license server, and running arbitrary command line applications on each machine. However, this feature can be a potential security risk if you are not behind a firewall. If this is the case, we recommend that you keep this feature disabled.

After installing Deadline, you can enable or disable Remote Administration from the Deadline Monitor. In Super User mode, select Tools->Repository Options. More repository options are described here.

Deadline Emails - Setup An SMTP Server

Deadline uses email (in addition to NetSend) to notify users when their jobs have succeeded or failed. Email can also be used to notify system administrators of corrupted jobs in the queue. It is recommended that an SMTP server be setup so that you can make use of these features.

After installing Deadline, you can configure the email notification settings from the Deadline Monitor. In Super User mode, select Tools->Repository Options. More repository options are described here.

Slave Machines - Auto Login

If you're not running the Slave as a service, it can be set to start automatically when the machine it is on starts up, but this requires that the slave machine login automatically. On Windows, this can be done by modifying the registry on each slave.

These are the steps to setup your slave machine registry to login:

1. Download auto_login.reg
2. Edit the file to use the username and password you wish to
3. Login to the slave as the specified user, then double-click on this file to run
4. The next time you restart the machine, it should login automatically as the specified user.

By default, the slaves are set to start automatically when the machine logs in. This setting, as well as others, can be modified from the Deadline Launcher on each slave.