Setup guide

To delete a render node:
1 Deleting a node can make it more difficult to troubleshoot jobs with problems, since it will be more
difficult to determine which node carried out the flawed work. Before deleting a node, consider archiving
jobs that made use of it, to preserve job details, including the nodes to which tasks were sent.
2 Select the render node(s) of interest. Only nodes marked by the system as absent can be deleted.
3 Choose Delete Server from the Servers menu, or by right clicking the node. The node is deleted and is
removed from the list.
To help manage network traffic, schedule the availability of a render node:
1 Select the render node(s) of interest and choose Week Schedule from the Servers menu or the righ-click
menu. Periods of time that are green indicate the node is available to process jobs. By default, nodes
are always available.
2 Select the time of interest:
■ Select a single hour by clicking the hour of interest.
■ Select the same hour for each day with one click using the hour buttons.
■ Click and drag to select a number of hours at once.
■ Select a whole day using the days-of-the-week buttons.
■ Select the entire week by clicking the button at the top left. The selected time is shown in white.
3 Click the Allow or Disallow buttons, as desired. Green indicates node availability. Red indicates
processing is prohibited during this time.
4 Click OK to update the schedule for the node and close the dialog.
Server groups
A server group is a named collection of render nodes that is treated, for the most part, as if it were a single
node. By default, jobs are submitted by creative applications to the Backburner network as a whole. It is the
Backburner Manager that determines the specific render nodes to which they are sent, based on job type
and node availability. However, certain Autodesk applications can be configured to submit jobs to a specific
server group.
Server groups can be used to implement a job-processing strategy. For example, consider a facility with two
Visual Effects and Finishing applications, and a render farm consisting of eight Burn nodes, four of which
are GPU-enabled. In such a situation, you might create two server groups, one each for the non-GPU and
GPU-enabled Burn nodes. By assigning each Visual Effects and Finishing workstation to a different server
group, you can reserve the GPU-enabled Burn nodes for the workstation with higher priority or more
demanding jobs.
Server groups do not restrict your ability to assign render nodes to particular jobs as you see fit. When a
creative application is configured to submit its jobs to a server group, additional nodes can be assigned to
it, automatically, or manually, once the job is on the network. Conversely, you can always remove individual
nodes from a job, regardless of their relationship to a server group.
Two kinds of server groups can be created, local groups and global groups. In almost all cases, you will want
to create global server groups only. Local groups serve a particular purpose for 3ds Max, under a specific
Backburner configuration.
For information on configuring a creative application to submit jobs to a server group, see the User Guide
for the application of choice.
Create a server group:
1 Right-click All Servers in the server list and choose Global Group from the popup menu. If the option
is greyed-out, connect to a Backburner Manager, and then try again.
104 | Chapter 3 Networked processing