Tutorial: How to Set Rendernode to start when Windows 10 machine starts

Boojum the brown bunny

    Hi everyone,

    As some know, I have been putting together a renderfarm to render animations with.   All the machines are running Windows 10, which uses Task Scheduler to start jobs at machine start rather than the Start folder.   If you use Start Folder, then you have to log into every machine before Rendernode begins..  which takes time I really don't want to spend.    So here is how I set it up.

1.  In the search box, search for Task Scheduler

2.  When Task Scheduler opens, Left-click on Task Scheduler Library, then use Action 'Create new task'

3.  Enter a name that makes sense to you, Select "Run wether user is logged in or not", and do not select "Do not store password"

4.  Select Triggers Tab, then New Trigger, then in the dropdown, choose "Begin at Machine Startup"

5.  Select Actions Tab, New Action.   You want Action "Start a Program" and then browse to where you saved your Rendernode software at and select the Carrara Executable.

6.  Left-click OK.  You will be asked to enter your password.  Enter your login/password for the Windows 10 machine.   This will be saved and used to start Carrara Rendernode before anyone logs into the machine.

 

     I hope this helps everyone!

 

Jonstark

Interesting!   I only have Win 10 on my main PC, most of the others are Win7pro with the exception of one of my laptops, which is Win8pro.  I went into each of the nodes to change them so they don't require password upon startup and also so they automatically start the Carrara Render Node, so that I can just push the power button on each machine and after a minute or so the Render Nodes are visible/available in Carrara.  I also have them each set up with Remote Desktop enabled, so that if I need to actually go into any of the nodes and change any settings or anything I can do that from my main PC using Remote Desktop, which is also how I shut them down (for those who are curious, the normal shut down option doesn't exist when you're using Remote Desktop to remote into a node, but if you hold ctrl+alt+end you'll find an option to shut the computer off).

I only have 1 monitor to share between all of my node desktops/servers (I have some node laptops where it isn't an issue obviously as I can just use the laptop as it's own monitor if I need to), and I found it was absolutely imperative to set each node up so that all I had to do was push a button to turn it on and  auto start the Carrara render node app.  For a short (endless!) while at the start before I realized any of this was possible, I was disconnecting the monitor from my main machine, pulling out each node separately, connecting the monitor and also keyboard mouse to each one separately, to start up programs or shut the node down, this was very very onerous.  Massive thanks to Jay for turning me on to Remote Desktop, and thank goodness for youtube searches that let me alter my windows start up so that I didn't have to enter a password and separately startup the Carrara render node each time.  

Separately, I saw a youtube video on keeping heat as low as possible, and one tip I had never seen before (aside from the obvious of clean out dust, use good heatsinks, etc) was to alter the advanced power management settings for our processor down from 100% to 99%, which doesn't lose hardly anything noticeable in performance, but theoretically greatly extends processor life.  Don't know if it's true or not, but I lowered all my nodes to 99% instead of 100%, haven't seen any slowing in render times.

Diomede

Thank you.  This is great.

Dartanbeck

Boojum the brown bunny said:

   I hope this helps everyone!

Yikes, is this ever Cool! Thanks Boojum!!!