Apple Qmaster 2 - Manual (Page 4)

4
The Apple Qmaster Distributed Processing System
Computers that submit batches to Apple Qmaster are called clients. An Apple Qmaster
job is a processing task in the form of a Shake file, or other file or commands, that uses
UNIX commands to specify settings such as rendering instructions and file locations
and destinations.
Although a batch can include just one job, you will typically want to submit several
jobs at once for processing. Similarly, several people can use the same Apple Qmaster
system at the same time, with several client computers sending batches in the same
time frame. Batches are managed and distributed by the computer that is designated
as the Apple Qmaster
cluster controller. For more information, see the
Distributed Processing Setup guide.
Clients
Batches are submitted for processing from the client computers. A client computer can
be any computer that has Apple Qmaster installed and is on the same network as the
cluster controller. Multiple client computers can be on the same network, using the
same cluster to do the processing for various applications. See “
Submitting Batches
With The Apple Qmaster Application ” on page 8 for details.
Clusters
When a client sends batches to the Apple Qmaster system, all the processing and
subsequent moving of any output files is performed by a group of Apple Qmaster–
configured computers called a
cluster. To set up Apple Qmaster services, you use the
Apple Qadministrator application to create one or more clusters of service nodes, with
one cluster controller included in each cluster. Each computer in the cluster is
connected to the other computers in the cluster through a network connection. See
Distributed Processing Setup for more information on cluster setup. In particular, see
“Preparing a Network for Distributed Processing.”
Note: See the Shake Support web site ( http://www.apple.com/support/shake ) for an
online guide to setting up a full-time render farm, incorporating an Xserve computer
and cluster nodes.
Batch of
render jobs
Client computer
Shake jobs
are submitted.
Destination folder
Files are placed at
specified destination.
Rendered
files
Apple Qmaster cluster
Rendering is
performed by cluster.
UP01080.Book Page 4 Wednesday, March 16, 2005 12:54 PM