Limits and Job Machine Limits

• 1 Limits and Job Machine Limits
  • 1.1 Overview
  • 1.2 Job Machine Limits
  • 1.3 Limits
    • 1.3.1 New Limit
    • 1.3.2 Edit Limit
    • 1.3.3 Clone Limit
    • 1.3.4 Delete Limit
    • 1.3.5 Reset Limit Usage Count

Overview

In order to support rendering applications that use floating licensing to limit the number of clients rendering at a time, Deadline supports the ability to create Limits to manage this restriction. When creating a Limit, be sure to set the limit to the number of network licenses you have for that product.

For example, if you have 20 nodes in your render farm and only 10 licenses of Fusion, you can create a Fusion Limit with a limit of 10. When you submit a Fusion job to Deadline, be sure to specify the Fusion Limit. During rendering, Deadline will ensure that no more than 10 machines will be rendering jobs with the Fusion Limit at any given time. Because of this, you never have to worry about licensing issues.

Machine Limits are like a special type of Limit. Instead of limiting how many slaves can render a group of jobs, they limit the number of slaves that can render one particular job. This is useful if you want to render a bunch of jobs simultaneously.

Job Machine Limits

Machine Limits are a per-job option, and can be managed by right-clicking on a job in the Deadline Monitor and selecting Modify Machine Limit. This brings up the Job Properties window with the Machine Limit tab selected.

You can modify the following options for the machine limit:

• Number Of Machines That Can Render This Job Concurrently: The number of slaves that can render this job at one time.
• Release Machine Limit Stub When Task Progress Reaches: If enabled, you can have a slave release the machine limit stub when the current task it's rendering reaches the specified progress. Note that not all plug-ins report task progress, in which case the machine limit stub will not be released until the task finishes rendering.
• Whitelisted/Blacklisted Slaves: If slaves are on a blacklist, they will never try to render this job. If slaves are on a whitelist, only those slaves will try to render this job.

Limits

Limits can be managed from the Limit list in the Deadline Monitor while in Super User mode. This list shows all the Limits that are in your Repository. It also displays useful information about each Limit such as its name, its limit, and the number of Limit stubs that are currently in use. You can access many options for the Limit, which are listed below, by right-clicking on them.

New Limit

Use this option to add a new Limit to your Repository.

You can modify the following settings for the new Limit:

• Name: The name of the new Limit.
• Limit: The number of slaves that can use this Limit at one time.
• Release At Task Progress: If enabled, you can have a slave release the Limit when the current task it's rendering reaches the specified progress. Note that not all plug-ins report task progress.
• Whitelisted/Blacklisted Slaves: If slaves are on a blacklist, they will never try to render jobs submitted to the Limit. If slaves are on a whitelist, only those slaves will try to render jobs submitted to the Limit.
• Slaves That Don't Add To The Limit: These slaves will ignore this Limit when searching for a job. This is useful if you are juggling floating and node locked licenses, in which case your machines with node locked licenses should be placed on this list.

Edit Limit

Edit the settings for an existing Limit.

You can modify the following options for the existing Limit:

• Limit: The number of slaves that can use this Limit at one time.
• Release At Task Progress: If enabled, you can have a slave release the Limit when the current task it's rendering reaches the specified progress. Note that not all plug-ins report task progress.
• Whitelisted/Blacklisted Slaves: If slaves are on a blacklist, they will never try to render jobs submitted to the Limit. If slaves are on a whitelist, only those slaves will try to render jobs submitted to the Limit.
• Slaves That Don't Add To The Limit: These slaves will ignore this Limit when searching for a job. This is useful if you are juggling floating and node locked licenses, in which case your machines with node locked licenses should be placed on this list list.

Clone Limit

Use the previous settings of an existing Limit to create a new one.

You can modify the following options for the new Limit:

• Name: The name of the new Limit (cannot be the same as the original).
• Limit: The number of slaves that can use this Limit at one time.
• Release At Task Progress: If enabled, you can have a slave release the Limit when the current task it's rendering reaches the specified progress. Note that not all plug-ins report task progress.
• Witelisted/Blacklisted Slaves: If slaves are on a blacklist, they will never try to render jobs submitted to the Limit. If slaves are on a whitelist, only those slaves will try to render jobs submitted to the Limit.
• Slaves That Don't Add To The Limit: These slaves will ignore this Limit when searching for a job. This is useful if you are juggling floating and node locked licenses, in which case your machines with node locked licenses should be placed on this list.

Delete Limit

Remove an existing Limit from your Repository.

Reset Limit Usage Count

Sometimes a Limit stub will get orphaned, meaning that it is contributing to the usage count, but no machine is actually using it. After a while, Deadline will eventually clean up these orphaned Limit stubs. This option provides the means to delete all existing stubs immediately (whether they are orphaned or not), which will require machines to acquire them again.