There are occassions when I need to render a single frame, simple, job (such as IronPython script, WinRAR job etc…).
Most of my machines are shut-down due to PowerManagement rules, but one, for example. When I submit the simple job to deadline, it seems that Deadline randomly picks what machine shold be assigned for that job, but, that’s not ideal. Ideal wold be to go through “Idle” machines first, then and if only on Idle machines are found, should Deadline proceed through the regular PowerManagement checks and wake-up-calls.
Example: I just submitted a WinRAR job, it woke up one of my machines. The machine finished and was Idle. Then I submitted another WinRAR job, but Deadline picked up and woke up a completely different machine. So, after a few of these, I ended up with a completely up and running render farm and now the machines are sitting there, idle and pretty much counting down the minutes when PowerManagement shuts them down again.
I need a bit of a refresher, but what is your current power management interval set to in the Pulse options? I took a look at our power management code, and it should only be waking up machines if there are queued tasks for a job that need rendering. By the sounds of it, power management is getting to the newly submitted job before the idle slave does. I seem to recall that you have a very short interval for power management checks. I imagine if you were to bump that up a bit, the occurrences of this situation would be much less.
You can just check the Pulse Settings in the Repository Options from the Monitor. There is a Power Management Check Interval value: thinkboxsoftware.com/deadlin … ons/#Pulse
Hey Lukas,
I remember Ryan once telling me that the power management check in Pulse is quite intensive on the overall Deadline system which is why it’s only every 5 minutes or so. Just a side point, but increasing this value (slowing down the check interval rate), may well help to further stablise your setup and improve overall Deadline performance?
Ryan - I actually wonder if it would be a good idea to set a min value for this check interval in a future version of Deadline to help protect customers?
Just a thought, I’ll run away now
M
