1 10.6 MacMini Server + 78 10.5 XServe G5s

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1 10.6 MacMini Server + 78 10.5 XServe G5s

Hello
I have 78 Dual 2.0GHZ G5 Xserves which will be running OS X Server 10.5.7
I have a 6TB XServe RAID
I also have a brand new Apple MacMini Server (Intel) running OS X Server 10.6.x

I am hoping to take content produced in Final Cut Studio 3 (running on Intel MacBook Pros / Mac Pros) and be able to utilise the suite of older XServes as QMaster nodes. I have read there can be issues mixing intel and ppc units, but was hoping that the MacMini Server could be the controller which then segments jobs between the G5s.

Ideally, I would love for one of the XServe G5 units to be able to be the QMaster Controller.

Any advice or caveats of this approach would be greatly appreciated!

Mac Pro Early 2008 8Core, MacBook Pro i5, Dual 1.8Ghz G5, more stuff, Mac OS X (10.6.6)

Posted on Mar 4, 2011 7:13 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

BenB

Level 6

12,097 points

Apr 4, 2011 10:16 AM in response to Lord Cuckoo Face

All versions on all machines must be the same.

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Answer 2

Apr 19, 2011 2:02 PM in response to Lord Cuckoo Face

And With ben's comment... Versions of Quicktime, Versions of Compressor, and Versions of Qmaster, must all be the same... And on that note I don't believe the latests support PPC 😟 (G5) ...

Best of my knowledge, using the G5's for encoding isn't an option if you're trying to go latest versions of things.

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Answer 3

Apr 23, 2011 5:15 AM in response to Blacknight582

Thanks for the comments. The way I am looking at it now, is to keep it as an XGrid only and ignore the QMaster stuff. Rather than using QMAster, it will probably be cheaper using Matrox MAX cards/breakout I/O devices to speed up encoding.

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Answer 4

Apr 23, 2011 6:18 AM in response to Lord Cuckoo Face

Wow, that's a big render farm. If you could only get someone like BenB to tell you how it could be done, you would be able to get a movie out of Compressor before you submitted it.

bogiesan

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