Thinkbox Software has released a public preview of Deadline 10, the latest update of a computer management solution. This update adds native integration to the AWS Cloud to enable customers to expand their render farms – whether it exists on-premise, purely on the cloud, or a hybrid of both – simply and securely.
>> See Also: Thinkbox Software releases Deadline 9.5
NEW FEATURES in Deadline 10• DEADLINE AWS PORTAL
The new AWS Portal in the Deadline Monitor connects to your existing AWS account, and allows you to launch AWS render nodes that connect to and extend your on-premise Deadline render farm. You can choose to launch render nodes with rendering software pre-installed, or you can take a vanilla Deadline render node and install your own software on it. The render nodes can use Deadline Usage Based Licensing, or they can use floating licenses by connecting to your on-premise Deadline license server.
In addition, a new asset transfer service allows the AWS render nodes to see your on-premise network file system as if it were in the cloud. The files themselves do not need to exist in the cloud in order for the rendering process to begin, and instead are synchronized to the cloud on demand as the rendering process needs them. In some cases, a pre-warming operation will occur to synchronize these assets that jobs need prior to starting the rendering process. In both cases, the asset files are cached in the cloud so that they can use reused again without re-synchronization.
• DYNAMIC LICENSING SWITCHING
The Deadline Slaves can now automatically switch between traditional Floating Licensing and Usage Based licensing. This is controlled by a Floating Licensing threshold and a Usage Based licensing limit. Prior to rendering a job, a Slave will first try to check out a Floating License. If this fails, the Slave will check if the Floating License threshold has been reached, which is based on the number of Slaves currently rendering with Floating licenses. If it has, the Slave will then use Usage Based licensing if the Usage Based limit has not been reached. This new feature is off by default, but can be enabled to have your Slaves always prefer Floating Licenses if they are available.
In addition, there is now an option for unlimited 3rd party usage based licensing when configuring a 3rd party Limit. This is useful if you’re using the new AWS Portal panel in the Monitor to start and stop AWS render nodes, and you don’t want to manually adjust the maximum number of machines that can use 3rd party usage based licensing.
• FLEXIBLE DEADLINE CLIENT CONFIGURATION
All settings in the deadline.ini configuration file can now be overridden using environment variables. Simply prefix “DCONFIG_” to any supported deadline.ini key and give it a value. In addition, Deadline will now fall back to the values at the user and system level if an environment override isn’t present. For example, if a key doesn’t exist in the environment, the user deadline.ini file is checked. If it doesn’t exist there, the system deadline.ini file is checked. This allows for configuration overrides at the user and environment levels.
• EXECUTE COMMAND WHITELIST
To enhance security, a new Execute Command whitelist option has been added to Remote Administration, which allows you to define the exact commands that are allowed to be executed on remote machines. This allows administrators to simply pick from a list of pre-defined commands to execute remotely, and removes the ability to type in arbitrary commands. This new feature is optional, and enabled by default.
• REMOTE CONNECTION SERVER
The Remote Connection Server is a new Deadline application that is meant to be a drop-in replacement for the Deadline Proxy Server application. In any situation where you could use the Proxy Server, you can use the Remote Connection Server instead. Going forward, we will be focusing on improving the performance of the Remote Connection Server, and eventually the Proxy Server will be retired. In order to allow both to co-exist, the Proxy Server panel in the Deadline Monitor has been updated to work with both applications, and has been rebranded as the Connection Servers panel.
You can visit releases notes for more information about Deadline 10.
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