Can we please get Deadline as a subscription?
Just give us a URL: StudioName.AWSDeadline.com
Give us a username and password
Then let us install DeadlineLocal.Exe for AWS Asset Server, AWS Cloud Portal, Pulse/Caching/Cleanup, WebForwarding, Port Forwarding etc.
Take a note out of Chaosgroup licensing. You enter a username… and a password into the license server… and it gives you licenses. If you want cached licenses in case the internet goes out… you have that option. But configuration is Install… and then a USERNAME and a PASSWORD. That’s it.
Imagine this sane user experience. I go to the UBL store. I enter my USER and PASS and enter the store. I buy 100 hours of Vray Licenses. Those don’t go to a portal website somewhere… those get added to my cloud installation of Deadline… they just go straight there. I don’t then find my cloud license server address and key… it’s in my account. I don’t need to download a pfx file and store a folder of them and point a license forwarder at it… I just log into my DeadlineLocal.exe and enter my USER and PASS and it can now forward licenses. Or I could skip DeadlineLocal.exe if I don’t need caching or WOL or local network stuff and just install DeadlineWorker.exe and enter my USER and PASS into the launcher and that machine is now connected.
The USER and PASS web account also has my AWS credentials saved. I install DeadlineLocal.exe I enter my USER and PASS, it’s ready to launch cloud infrastructure. Or if I don’t really need more than 20 or 30 render nodes… it can just directly access StudioName.AWSDeadline.com. Bounce the forwarded local licenses through the web hosted repository just like worker logs.
Deadline is unmanageable now without a full time IT person. I literally couldn’t list every component that is essential and needs to be properly configured for the system to function. Every time we need to use AWS Cloud rendering it takes me at least a full day of work just get it back to functional. Which if we’re needing cloud rendering usually means it’s somewhat of an emergency need for increased capacity.
We just signed up for a service today which was easy. It connected to the cloud from within the application. We hit submit. The frames downloaded to where we pointed on the network. They charged our credit card. If it costs $800 in man hours to render something every time we need AWS we’re out. The managed solutions might charge a premium over spot instances but we can find them, sign up and finish rendering before I can figure out which port is conflicting with another deadline service which happens to be on the same port as another service’s license server which is whitelisted but silently dropping packets because… etc etc. etc.
Oh yeah and don’t forget to stop your infrastructure when you’re done or you’re in for hundreds of dollars in AWS charges. The state of Deadline makes for a really cool hacked together proof of concept but it’s not a product and I’m sure the Pixologics of the world are happy to have 18 co-dependent services which they can load balance on 10 different VMs on 3 fail-over hosts but the complexity breeds fragility and Deadline is incredibly fragile.
Remember when Deadline required each machine just needing to be able to see an SMB share and a license server? Pepperidge farm remembers.