Cluster / Render Farm

[tllim]

I really would really like a 'Cluster' area.  

As I said already my interest in the 'Pine 64' is a render farm.  I watched a video on YouTube of a Render Farm setup in 2010 with 24 nodes.  Each node ran "Ubuntu".  They stated their monthly electricity bill was in excess of $1,000.  I am confident that the speed and memory of the $29 version of the 'Pine 64' is comparable to this.  But the electricity consumption would be much less.

I've found tons of discussion about "Kdenlive" should have a render farm, but haven't yet found any actual "how to" guide, if it is possible.  Where I see the Rendering can have scripts I have an inkling it is possible, but really don't know where to start.

I honestly can't commit to moderating this.  I really wish I could.  I personally am enduring an extended stint of physiotherapy.  

I have one other comment for consideration unrelated to this.  The Canadian economy has tanked.  Where the Canadian dollar and United States dollar were on par with one another in 2012 it is now $0.69 on the dollar.  You likely could greatly lower the cost of shipping to Canadian customers, if you have many, if there was a way of getting a bunch of these in Canada and shipped from Canada.  E-bay has a shipping program for the United States to Canada.  It would be worth looking into it if the cost would be any less.  It is just a thought.

Ron

Thanks on the render farm interesting, there is always new things to learn everyday. Microserver clustering has been a hot topic for us especially there is potential can create a energy harvest and self sustain server farm.  Lets make few assumption: we have 12 hour sun light and 12 hour dark time, the Pine A64 board consumes 2.5w (noted on can go higher when all 4 CPU cores in fully utilization). Three large tables size solar panel can produce 1KW of energy, which can supply power to 200 Pine A64 board (800 64-bit ARM cores) with LiPo battery which consumes 5W per board while operating and charging. At night, the Pine A64 board which already has build in battery charger circuit will operate from LiPo battery. If the battery runs out of energy at mid night, it is still much cheaper to use power line at mid night when the energy cost is lowest. This is an interesting idea and can be use in a lot of applications such as render farm and others. We have collaborate with Picocluster and hopefully there are more microserver clustering interest, idea, and implementation can be flourish soon.

If someone interest to moderate the "cluster" thread, lets do it.

Somehow, Canada and US is neighbor country, but shipping costs just like ship to EU even with Ebay program. However, as I knows, Canada ship to US is cheap.