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Can Linux cloud instances (e.g. on Digital Ocean or Linode) be used for own, on-demand render farms? Are there any open source solutions for "slave" servers?

EDIT

My research didn't lead me to anything that made sense / could be used as a guide for creating own virtual farm on a cloud platform.

I was asked to help on a project and I thought that using cloud servers might be a way to render it faster and cheaper at the same time, because I can handle server-stuff.

The farm would be used for speeding up the rendering process.
The cloud machines would be connected with one workstation, which distribute the tasks between them, use their CPU power and render the video faster.

The project in question is in 3D Max and final product is an animation of medium complexity.
For example, average render speed for an i7 with 32GB of RAM is between 4-5 minutes per frame. Total video length will be under 10 minutes, meaning relatively long rendering time.

As I understood, CPU power is mostly used for rendering, so I thought that cloud instances at Digital Ocean / other similar cloud providers could hypothetically be used.

Let me know if I should post some other details as well.

Thanks!

I do apologize if this question is not within the scope of this site; I wasn't sure where to post it.

Aram Boyajyan
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    Honestly, if you were looking at forming a render farm you'd already know the technologies available to you... – Nathan C Aug 04 '14 at 16:21
  • Thanks for quick response; I was asked to help on a project, and thought this might be a way to speed it up while paying less than for rendering farms, because I could handle server-related stuff. Rendering is not what I do generally. If you could point me to the right direction, I would greatly appreciate it. – Aram Boyajyan Aug 04 '14 at 16:23
  • We need a lot more information, this question is far too vague, you can put any work load anywhere you like but there's no guarantee that it will meet your requirements, and we can't tell you how likely this if you don't list your requirements yourself. – Alex Berry Aug 04 '14 at 16:27
  • @AlexBerry question updated. – Aram Boyajyan Aug 04 '14 at 16:37
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    I'd imagine rendering is **GPU**-heavy, not CPU, which will limit you quite a bit in which clouds are possible. – ceejayoz Aug 04 '14 at 16:40
  • That's what I thought as well, but I was explained that it's really the processor which does the work on the slave servers. – Aram Boyajyan Aug 04 '14 at 16:58
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    @Ivanhoe123 For what it's worth, EC2 has several GPU-enabled instances. Beware, though, the on-demand costs are quite expensive. When I've needed them for small jobs, I've used spot instances. – EEAA Aug 04 '14 at 17:49
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    @ceejayoz You can find GPU-oriented cloud resources, if you look hard enough. Pretty niche and hard to find, though the major vendors (NVIDIA, ATI, maybe others) offer hardware especially designed for GPU virtulaization. – HopelessN00b Aug 04 '14 at 18:15
  • 3DS Max can use both CPU and/or GPU to render, depending on the renderers you use. Some of which you may have to obtain from third parties. I suggest you go buy a GPU and search for an appropriate renderer add-on for 3DS Max to take advantage of it. – Michael Hampton Aug 04 '14 at 19:57
  • Having googled "gpu render cloud" I came across this as the top hit: http://www.rebusfarm.net/ . This is not a product recommendation, by the way, but it seems there are specialist clouds out there already to help you do things like this. – Alex Berry Aug 05 '14 at 08:10

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Cloud services can be used if you can harness the power of the Keplar/Telsa GPUs that most providers offer as "GPU-enabled" instances.

However, these instances are significantly more expensive than their CPU counterparts. If you're rendering with the CPU, cloud instances will not do the trick as they're on generally commodity hardware and slower than that i7 you have working. You could stick a bunch of these together to make it worthwhile, but costs can accumulate very quickly.

Nathan C
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