How I can avoid Network rendering crashes?

[Riky]

Hi,
I'm searching some infos and tweaks to minimize the probability of crashes of the nodes during a network rendering.

I'm using LW7.5 in a windows ambient, and I have 8-9 nodes. All machines I use for network rendering (with screamer module) have Win2000 as operating system.

When I have to render simple scene, I have no probleim, but I have noticed that more the scene is complex, much more the crashing probability of some nodes increases.

Anyone knows how I can reduce this random crashes?

Thank you.

[Adrian@Stufish]

Other than keeping the machines cool & making sure that you have ample memory (going into disk thrashing enormously increases the crash potential), you are really just up against 1) the fact that nodes do crash, & 2) the more of them you have running, the more often you will see a crash.
That said, what I do is use LightNet to run the nodes, which automaticaly re-starts the node and re-adds the frame to the render queue, and install 'tweakUI' to auto re-boot & logon if the machine falls over. that way I only loose aout 3% of my total available render time - unless a machine goes down completely.

[trentonia]

If you use http://www.respower.com you will never have to worry about your machines crashing during renders.

[Adrian@Stufish]

Unless perhaps you have an office full of computers, half of which are workstations working at 10% capacity for an 8 hour day unless you use them as render nodes?
And unless, like me, you trim your scenes to render within 1 GB ram, and then work out just how long it would take to transfer 1 Gig to a 3rd party and get back over the crap ADSL services available in the UK?
And if like many people you run a series of ever more complete tests culminating in the 'go-for-it' one, and tend to check stuff out as it renders, and stop, change, re-start etc.
Why, then you might ask pepple to stop advertising services in these discussion groups, and concentrate on answering other peoples problems.

[trentonia]

Sir,
I did have an office full of computers - some I got rid of - didn't need them. I used the rest for some smaller projects. Sometimes larger projects require more than I have...Yes, I admit it, sometimes my network is too small...SIZE DOES MATTER! Yes, and sometimes, I would even copy my files to DVD and ship them...Yes, SHIP them to Respower...still saving me 4 days of rendering time...allowing me to TWEAK my animation that many more days, making it that much better. It worked for me, and I was just trying to propose it as a solution for this problem. Sorry.
Me

[Adrian@Stufish]

No offence meant really, just a bit annoyed with the idea of outsourcing as the first recourse - which seems to be increasingly popular in our accoutant-led society, and which IMHO is often only a good idea IF you agree with accountant's definition of 'costs'.
Clearly there are always going to be cases when sending it off and getting someone else to do the crunching is sensible.
I suppose the real problem for many of us might be the hurdle of getting up the nerve to ask the purse-holder to pay out for external number crunching when he knows we've got the power in-house. OK for emergencies though.