He told me to do project server because its better, I did that and its the best sh** ever.
He told me to run proxmox on actual server hardware and not my janky ass qnap lxc container setup, I did that and today I sucessfully restored a corrupted timeline from a 30min old snapshot for @hildebrandtbernd .
It feels incredibly powerfull to have the peace of mind that a setup like this gives you, I i know the stuff is safe and that we can quickly restore the state of any project at almost any time in a matter of minutes.
So do what alan says.
If you are Solo, its actually SUPER easy to get a setup like this going.
Find a computer that can run proxmox, it runs in most hardware, ideally you would have like 8cores 16+ GB of ram and some nice fast storage like a 1TB nvme will probably be fine, you got a old Z820 ? great! just mind your power bill, i can also recommend something like the minisforum ms01 as a small proxmox node! it has 10Gbit onboard and a bunch of other snazzy features like thunderbolt - you have a old thunderbolt raid you want to turn into a nas? this would do the trick.
2(optional but a good idea) find a second computer, or maybe you have a synology or somethign allready, cool, install proxmox backup server on it, this will hold all the backups of the main server.
Install the autodesk rockylinux VM on the machine, follow autodesks guide on how to install project server
setup backup rotation , snapshots etc all in proxmox , its not scary its super easy, I used ZFS throughout.
also another law of S+W, have a single project per S+W Partition. Depending on the # of active projects, this might neccesitate multiple seperate S+W Project Server VMs. We have 8 active VMs for a total of 64 possible partitions/projects, plus a 9th for destructive testing.
Since implementing this, we’ve never had a S+W corruption.
I was being a little hyperbolic. In version 2011 I created a container system (Docker) that would spin up on demand a full stone+wire setup and host a project. The build and spin up took about 30 seconds. Spent a lot of time working through the challenges with some friends at Autodesk, and I think it inspired what would eventually be the project server… but I imagine I wasn’t the only one.
Wait what? This can’t be the same @Tommy Hooper that managed all of the color management, flame workflow and invisible VFX at asylum when Hoyte won an Academy award for Master and Commander?
I am not sure, since I haven’t been invited for many years, but I believe that A52 have an extraordinarily mature and sophisticated workflow that encompasses many similar ideologies to instinctual and other companies.
Personally, my opinion is different.
Particularly in how remote individuals can participate in collaboration with a corporate structure and still provide valid contributions.
Yeah, I’m trying to live the ALan life but my basic Linux skills are killing me. Building my first (test) Project Server on an old HPz640. Stuck trying to direct the storagemedia to my Synology NAS.
I do have a question for ALan, I was thinking of buying a used Dell R740XD with Gold processors and 192GB of RAM as a project server AND framestore. What is your opinion? For storage I was considering filling it with U.2 Nvme drives OR SATA SSD’s. Obviously I’m losing performance with SATA SSDs but they are way cheaper and with 24 of them I’d be maxing out 2x25Gbe connections anyway right?
I’ll keep bashing the terminal in the meantime. Trying to rekindle my long lost love for the command line.
Actually… at IBC Stephane also told me to ruin a project server… but you’re right, listening to Alan helps. I’ve only got to find tiiiime to do all these nice things like Logik projekt, project server etc… etc…
Only thing is you dont get any of the snapshots and backups and restore glory , but my teat setup was
→ mac mini m1
→ owc thunderblade shared out via NFS as a framestore
in the end a project server is just a flame, project server doesnt require a gpu , it doesnt have a gui in linux, thats about it otherwise pretty much the same thing.
any machine running actual flame like a old mac will work fine for this, thats what we dus first before we moved to a real big boy setup.
But yea i think the biggest benefit in all this is having snapshots and backups and getting that with a mac is not impossible either but requires some shenanigans …
So you need another license just for project server?
You mean using macs as a framestore? if so no, as Finn said. But if you mean use mac flames with project server It should work since Mac is just the OS where flame is launched but flame is reading a volume which is coming from proxmox or truenas or whatever you using. Its just like using mac flame with a Synology or Qnap as many do.
You dont need a license for flame if you dont launch the GUI, using it as a project server, backburner manager and BURN node does not require a license. You can ever archive projects without it, its quiet nice from adsk, its really just the “interactive” flame session that is moneys
You can use a mac a central framestore too, we used it just a smb shared volume across … worked fine until someone accidently pulled out the thunderbolt cable.
My current central framestore is a 5x NVME qnap nas its fast, its great.
its bascially JUST like opening a project on a remote mac/linux flame . its just that, nothing special at all, jusr sounds fancy but its really not.
Set your framestore to shared = true means “every other flame has access to this framestore volume over whatever protocol”
Shared = not just means the mac running “as a framestore and projectserver” shares this using stone + wire directly.
But yes , any NAS or whatever can be a framestore (adsk says they only support nfs fwiw).
any seperate machine can
Run linux project server
install full flame on a mac that does the same thing.
maybe think about it more like taking the complex thing that is flame with all its components and then spreading them out to seperate devices.
I can wipe any workstation at any time, thats a big benefit, because everyhing is seperate.
I can startup a new flame in maybe 30min from unboxing a mac studio
If computer dies mid session I can replace it easily and fast with a backup …
You only need to buy stuff … once so ts scales nice
but yea honestly biggest benefit BY far is peace of mind. I dont have to archive anything anymore, I can just restore my project server instance to be yesterday at 4pm if I want to .
And the coolest shit is that once you have a system like this , you can also do the same with resolve project library and whatever else you want… its amazing just amazing
flame on
had a S+W corruption.