I just wondered if any networking elites could list some of the details of how audio/video studios have their networks operating.  I just watched the extras on Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow and noticed that they had tons of Apple and PC servers running…
Since I’ve never been introduced to anything that complex in terms of networking, I was wondering if one could explain how it is setup and how it would distribute that power.
For example:
1.There were at least 5 Xserve G5’s running and multiple PC servers but how are the G5’s joined together and how are the PC servers joined together (assuming they are link in a 42U rack)?

2. When there are multiple servers how would they be connected to all the individual artist’s computers?

3. How do subnets (255.255.255.255 etc) work?

4. I’ve been googling around and of course check my favorite places for this type of info, About and HowStuffWorks , but I kinda wanted to hear from your guys’ understanding.

Thanks for any time u put into explaining this for me.

Also, kinda off the main topic but I’m curious, are Apple processor’s really more efficient at video editing than PC processors? (hence why they seem to be used so much in video production)

When you ask about the computers used, do you mean the graphics workstations the artists use or the rendering farms that actually spit out the final rendered frame? (yes, I know it’s corrected after this render) For the artists, creative types seem to prefer Apple equipment, but most of the same off-the-shelf software is available for both. AFAIK, most of the rendering farms are not Apple-based equipment. Pixar for example uses Intel-based PCs running Linux clustering software. I don’t know what the interconnect used for that, but the easiest and cheapest to use would be GB Ethernet. Storage is probably a SAN or NAS device connected via fiber channel or GB Ethernet.

Unfortunately in my job I’m really not in a position to play around with that sort of equipment.  :(

I’m just kinda curious about Linux/Unix server systems and how they are implemented.

Are the servers, rendering farms, and supercomputers only used when the task is to great for the client computer?

How do the client computers decide when to utilize the rendering farms resources? (And any elaboration originating from this topic)

Why not just use a supercomputer for every client assuming there were only 50-75 graphic artists (again keeping with just this scenario for now)? Wouldn’t that be generally more cost effective than getting a supercomputer, or rendering farm, AND getting high-end desktop systems for the artists?

Again thanks.

I think you’re misunderstanding what’s happening. Pretend you’re at Pixar making the Incredibles. In order to have an animation of Mr Incrdible punching out a giant robot, you need artists to make the 3D meshes of Mr Incredible, the robot and the scenery, make the textures for the meshes, animate the movement of everything, ect. That actual work is done with software that works similarly to Maya, Premiere and Photoshop. That artistic work is done on regular, garden-variety PCs and Macs and saved. When the scene is done, all the parts are put together and given to the cluster to render. I don’t know how fast they do it now, but I’ve read that for extremely complex scenes, it can take days.

So the decision to use Mac, Windows, or Linux is completely up to the preference and/or software requirements of the artist regardleess of what the cluster is running and the need for networking is simply a larger-scale version of a file-sharing home network? Wouldn’t there be problems with OS incompatibility for the network?
Sorry I know I’m really a n00b with this stuff…

[quote author=“OnMyWayUp”]So the decision to use Mac, Windows, or Linux is completely up to the preference and/or software requirements of the artist regardleess of what the cluster is running and the need for networking is simply a larger-scale version of a file-sharing home network?

From what I understand, yes. You won’t find too many professional artists working on Linux though. Linux would most likely be used for storage and/or processing.

[quote author=“OnMyWayUp”]Wouldn’t there be problems with OS incompatibility for the network?

This is less of a problem than it sounds. Mac and Linux servers/clients can communicate with Windows through SAMBA and NFS drivers for NT are available.