Hey folks,
I am currently in the process of updating deadline. I’m running a cloud-farm scenario on Google Compute Engine. I’m doing so for quite a while and I’m happy with the overall setup. But While reading the changelog I’ve stumbled across this:
Licensing for Deadline 10.1 is now free when being run on AWS. The Deadline Worker no longer requires a license (floating or usage based) when running on AWS instances. If you already have floating or usage based licensing for Deadline, the Worker will not consume them when running on AWS instances. Note that Deadline 10.0 and earlier still require a license to run on AWS instances.
Is this generally true? I mean, I’ve been using my “own” cloud setup on google compute engine for years now, meaning not using any of the deadlines AWS specific features. So basically my question is, if I would switch to AWS, would I no longer be required to renew my deadline licenses every year because it would just be able to run without a license? Even though I’m working in my “own” setup, meaning not using any of the AWS specific tools?
I had a question in this same topic I’d like to ask too. I’ve been using AMI based on older Deadline version. I assume I will need to upgrade Deadline client in the AMI right? Are there extra steps I need to take before/after client installation? Any settings to set?
Your understanding is correct. If you install the Deadline 10.1 Worker on an Amazon Machine Image, it will detect that it is running on an EC2 instance and automatically stop looking for any type of license.
It does not matter whether you are using the AWS Portal features with a hybrid pipeline where the Deadline 10.1 Repository is located on-premises, or an all-in setup where both the Repository and the render nodes are on AWS.
Currently the only catch is that without paying for an active support and maintenance, you won’t get any of the bonus tools (mainly Draft, as you probably don’t really need the now obsolete VMX/Balancer). Ideally, Draft should also be changed to run for free on AWS, but that is not the case yet.
It depends on whether you are running AWS Portal, or your own setup using the Spot Event Plugin, or the VMX/Balancer.
In the case of AWS Portal Amazon Machine Images, it is a good idea to always start with one of the pre-defined AMIs for the latest version, and install the 3rd party software and plugins you want to run. Use the EC2LaunchSettings app to “Shutdown without Sysprep” and once the instance has stopped, build a custom AMI from that instance. This approach is necessary because in addition to the Deadline Client software, there are asset synchronization tools pre-installed on the AWS Portal AMIs that you cannot install yourself, and the Deadline AMI is pre-configured to run scripts that register it correctly with the AWS Portal infrastructure.
In the case of a custom AWS setup, it would be enough to simply upgrade the existing Deadline 10.0 Client to the latest Deadline 10.1 Client. So you would launch an On-Demand EC2 instance with your existing custom AMI, install the latest Deadline 10.1 Client, stop the instance and create a new custom AMI.
Alternatively, you could start with a base AMI from the AWS Marketplace (Amazon Linux 2 or Windows Server 2019 or 2016) and install everything from scratch, including the Deadline 10.1 Client and the 3rd party software.
The Deadline 10.1 Client (in particular the Deadline 10.1 Worker) contains the logic that enables the license-free mode, there is no need to install anything else to activate that behavior. As long as the Worker is running on an EC2 instance in an AWS Region outside of China, it should simply run without a license.