Virtual renderfarms aka ec2 vs linode

[NRJ]

Thought I'd test things out a bit with the linux render node and ended up benchmarking quickly Amazon EC2 and Linode. I'm using my laptop as reference and it's an Intel core i7-2670QM @ 2.20Ghz. System has 12gb of memory.

On EC2 I used the Extra Large high CPU instance and on Linode I used the smallest available instance which is the 1gb. Main difference is that linode has only 1gb of memory vs amazons 7gb. Linode has Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2670 0 @ 2.60GHz CPU. Amazon instance I got had Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2650 0 @ 2.00GHz.

I used a simple scene with approx 7 light sources and no objects.

Render times
On my laptop the scene renders in approx 7:45.

I did a total of two runs which were about 30 mins separated to see if there were big load differences.
First run with linode was 7:43 and on amazon 7:58.
Second run with linode was 7:37 and on amazon 8:03

Cost comparison

Linode costs 20 us dollars per month. EC2 extra large cpu instance costs 0.07 on spot price from northern US (cheapest one). That's about 50 US dollars per month.

I also quickly compared to Ranch computings offering.
On Linode each frame would cost 0.356 us cents and on Amazon 0.9127 us cents. (slight approximations)
On Ranch it wold be 12 US cents per frame if one uses the cheapest and 29 US cents if the most expensive option is used.

To sum it up
Obviously one can't just compare the prices as when you're running your own machines  you need to manage them. Also there's a big difference on available memory. Ranch probably can take anything you throw at it but linode and amazon both have limited memory so depending on your scene that might be a problem. For example to double the memory on linode you'll also be doubling the frame cost. So for projects using a lot of memory Amazon will most likely be best option. If you have simple project with small memory requiriments Linode should work...

Then there's also the problem that comes with virtual servers... You never know excatly what you're getting and for example linode _might_ complain at some point if you're hogging all the cpu all the time as those are shared resource between linodes. However I did ask them and they said that they'll be in touch if it seems to be a problem so at least it wasn't big fat NO from them.

Also if speed is an issue, Ranch will be the fastest unless you have enough licenses for many own render nodes.

Also if you're thinking of creating your own server farm I'd guess it's no use unless you plan on rendering 24/7 for the next few years and more... Most likely  you could buy similar powered computer with for 1100-1300$ or so (I live in finland so no idea about the actual prices in US, convertin everything from Euros...). If it uses 300 watts of electricity when rendering and electricity is about 11 us cents per kWh it's about 289 dollars per year. So the break even will be in about two years if you can/need to render two years straight and nothing breaks down. Also Amazon has been cutting prices aggressively during last years so the actual break even might even be longer due to future price cuts from cloud operators.



-NRJ

[Dune]

You know Pixelplow? http://www.pixelplow.net/ Good and cheap! No, I'm not a stockholder 

[NRJ]

Thanks! Hadn't heard of it.
Did quick calculation and if I compare it to my machine 2.6gHz and 8 cores so it becomes 0.4784 USD per hour for terragen. Now that's almost 7 times more expensive than Amazon but a lot more affordable than Ranch. Already makes it almost tempting not to set up your own virtual farm (:

[cyphyr]

Fascinating and tempting.

I'm out of my depth here but can you explain how you rendered Terragen scenes on the Amazon Cloud. I could not see it as one of the supported softwares, so how did you do it?

cheers

Richard

[NRJ]

I'm out of my depth here but can you explain how you rendered Terragen scenes on the Amazon Cloud. I could not see it as one of the supported softwares, so how did you do it?

It's fairly simple but you need basic knowledge of linux to do it as you'll be working only on command line. You can also do it on windows servers but that's more expensive but you can play over normal windows desktop..

Anyways what you basically need to do is set up EC2 instance which is a server. Once you launch the instance (= start up the server) you just need to install terragen and the depencies and start rendering. Starting up EC2 instance is basically the same as buying own server and running that at your home.. You just never see the EC2 server..

For example to install depencies
Debian:
apt-get install libgl1-mesa-swx11 libglu1-mesa freeglut3 libfreetype libfreetype6 libjpeg62 libpng12-0
Ubuntu:
apt-get install libosmesa6 libglu1-mesa freeglut3 libfreetype6 libjpeg62 libpng12-0

With amazon you only need to do this once.. After that you can launch as many instances (copy the first one basically) as you need. However you're limited to 5 if you got the normal Pro license from Terragen.

There should be plenty of tutorials around how to start linux ec2 instance and once that's running then the hardest part is already done (: