After Effects Render Farm Basics

After Effects Render Farm Basics 

Applies to: After Effects CS4, CS5, CS5.5

HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS

Most Basic Configuration:
1x Client Workstation: Any machine that submits After Effects projects to the render farm.
1x Render Node: Any machine that processes After Effects projects submitted to the render farm.
1x Shared storage volume:  A file server, NAS, or file-level locking SAN (i.e. StorNext or Xsan) that is
visible to all clients and render nodes with concurrent read/ write access.  
-Gigabit Ethernet or Fibre network connection to shared storage volume for all clients and render nodes.

More Advanced Configuration

Same as above, with additional clients and render nodes. 
Important Considerations:
-Network bandwidth must scale with the number of clients and render nodes to avoid network throughput from
becoming a bottleneck that limits the effectiveness of the render farm. A good rule of thumb is to have at
least one render node for every three client workstations that will need to submit any at one time.
-Each client submission can be spread across a maximum of 99 render nodes.

SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS:

Client Workstations must have:
-A complete, licensed installation of After Effects CS5.5
-Licensed installations of any plug-ins required for that client workstation.

Render Nodes must have:
-A complete, licensed or unlicensed installation of After Effects CS5.  If the machine is usually a client
workstation that will be re-purposed as a render node after hours, then it will need a licensed installation
of After Effects installed on it.
-Every plug-in in use by any client that will be allowed to submit After Effects projects to the farm for
rendering.  If a plug-in is not installed on a render node that receives a project that uses that plug-in,
then all rendering for the project will fail.

Multi-Machine Rendering requires that the output module be set to an image sequence (tiff/ targa) rather
than an single movie file (quicktime) using...

Targa> Video Output: Channels: RGB+ Alpha
Depth: 32bit
Color: Straight (Un-matted)