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Project Server Configuration

A project server eases collaboration and simplifies project management and collaborative workflows. It does this by eliminating the creation of project data on the Flame, Flare, or Flame Assist workstations. The project data is stored on the centralized project server, while media is stored on a centralized storage.

In this topic, you learn about creating a project server that hosts Flame projects for connected Flame and Burn clients.

Hardware Specifications

Here are the minimal hardware specifications for a project server.

Components Minimal Requirements
CPU 8 physical cores
RAM 32 GB
Network bandwidth 1 Gbit/sec
Metadata volume 500 GB of SSD storage

The project server does not require a GPU since it's not used to decode media.

The Metadata volume stores all the data for the projects hosted by the project server, but not the media cache. In a workgroup environment using a project server, the Metadata volume stores project setups, presets, and compositional metadata. The media cache itself is expected to be stored on separate volumes hosted on a SAN or a NAS. By keeping massive media files separate from project metatada, this configuration improves network performances in a collaborative environment. Learn about attaching a SAN or NAS to the project server in section Configure the Project Server - Step Attach the media storage.

Number of Clients per Project server

The hardware specifications are the minimal requirements for a project server to serve five clients while minimizing network congestion and issues with storage quality of service. Clients can be any combinations of Autodesk Flame Family products and Burn nodes, such as one Flame, two Flares, and two Burn nodes.

The larger the number and size of projects the server hosts, the greater the number of concurrent clients, the more powerful the system must be. Based on your system configuration, storage throughput, and other factors, this guideline can vary. Be prepared to scale the system capabilities to match your production requirements. For example, to serve up to 8 Flames and 8 Burns, your server may need 192 GB of RAM, 2 TB of NVMe storage, and a 50 Gb/s network.

Set Up a Project Server on Linux

Flame Family products installed on Linux contain the script INSTALL_PROJECTSERVER. This script installs and configures the software to run as a project server.

This script is best used in a headless standalone system that will host projects for a small workgroup of Flame Family systems. No GPU is required on the system that runs the project server. It installs the minimum set of services required for sharing projects from a central location. During installation, you can redirect the storage of your project metadata to a different but persistent mount point.

To install a project server:

  1. Install the Autodesk Linux ISO on the workstation.

  2. Install the DKU without the NVIDIA kernel modules:

    INSTALL_DKU --nonvdriver

  3. Once the DKU is installed, restart the workstation.

  4. Copy the Flame distribution to the workstation and untar it.

    cp autodesk_<Flame_family_product>_<version>_LINUX64.tar /var/tmp
cd /var/tmp
tar xvf autodesk_<Flame_family_product>_<version>_LINUX64.tar

  5. Go to the location of the project server script.

    cd autodesk_<Flame_family_product>_<version>_LINUX64

  6. In a shell, run:

    sudo ./INSTALL_PROJECTSERVER --backburner --cidr <subnet of your workgroup> --dataroot <path where your projects should be stored>
    • --backburner installs Backburner on the system. The project server can be used as the Backburner manager for your workgroup.
    • --cidr lets you restrict the NFS exports of your project server to a range of IP addresses. If this option is not used, the exports are opened to all systems on your network. IP ranges are specified with IPv4/Prefix notation like 192.168.1.0/24.
    • --dataroot lets you redirect the standard project location from /opt/Autodesk to a different location. You could, for instance, mount a disk under /var/opt/Autodesk and use this path as your data root. This way, your data is separate from your project server installation. Should you want to decommission your project server but preserve your project data, you can mount your project disk on a different system and install the project server on the new system, using the new mount point as the data root.

    Example:INSTALL_PROJECTSERVER --backburner --cidr 192.168.1.0/24 --dataroot /var/opt/Autodesk

Configure the Project Server

Once you have created the project server, configure it using the following steps.

  1. Stop Autodesk Backburner and Autodesk Stone & Wire services

To stop Autodesk Backburner and Autodesk Stone & Wire Services.

sudo systemctl stop adsk_backburner
sudo systemctl stop adsk_sw
  1. Set the hostname of the project server

  1. Set the hostname of the server.

    sudo hostnamectl set-hostname --static <Your-host-name>
  1. Add the project server to the identity management system, if you have one.

Follow the instructions for your identity management system.

  1. Set the Framestore ID

In a shell, enter the following command.

echo Y | sudo /opt/Autodesk/sw/tools/sw_generateFramestoreId
  1. Configure Backburner Manager to run without servers

In a shell, enter the following.

cat << EOF | sudo /opt/Autodesk/backburner/backburnerConfig
y
n
EOF
  1. Restart Autodesk Backburner and Autodesk Stone & Wire services

To restart Autodesk Backburner and Autodesk Stone & Wire Services.

sudo systemctl start adsk_backburner
sudo systemctl start adsk_sw
  1. Attach the media storage

In a workgroup configuration, your media is stored on shared storage like a NAS or a SAN. Follow these steps to mount it on the server to use it as your media storage.

In a shell, run the following commands.

  1. Install autofs.

    sudo dnf install autofs

  2. Create the directory where the media is stored.

    sudo mkdir /mnt/StorageMedia

  3. Redirect to the NAS. Use the command sudo vi /etc/auto.direct and add the following line to the file

    /mnt/StorageMedia   -rw,noatime,nodiratime,bg   nas:/mnt/nas/StorageMedia
    Note: The above is an example of an NFS exported filesystem from server nas. Different shared storage solutions will use slightly different syntax. Adapt this line to your setup.

  4. Set up the automount. Use the command sudo vi /etc/auto.master and add the following line at the end of the file.

    /-  auto.direct

  5. Enable and restart autofs.

    sudo systemctl enable autofs
sudo systemctl start autofs
  1. Create the framestore

Setup the shared storage mount point according to your setup. Make sure to create a partition on the NAS dedicated to storing your media.

The following commands create the stonefs partition.

sudo mkdir /mnt/StorageMedia/p0
sudo chmod 777 /mnt/StorageMedia/p0
sudo sed -i 's|#\[Partition0|\[Partition0|' /opt/Autodesk/sw/cfg/stone+wire.cfg
sudo sed -i 's|#Path=$|Path=/mnt/StorageMedia/p0|' /opt/Autodesk/sw/cfg/stone+wire.cfg
Note:

If you prefer editing /opt/Autodesk/sw/cfg/stone+wire.cfg yourself, make sure to set Shared=True  on the new partition. This setting shares the storage between all clients accessing the project server's projects.  With Shared=True, the client systems (like Flame or Burn) access the storage directly, without going through the Project server. Or you can set it from the Project Management window in Flame. The ./INSTALL_PROJECTSERVER script sets the p0 partition to Shared=True so you don't have to set it.

  1. Configure user accounts

What you do depends on whether you're using an identity management system.

You have an identity management system

If you're using an identity management system, now's the time to add the server to the system. The procedure to do so is outside the scope of this document, but here are links to the documentation of some common identity management systems.

You don't have an identity management system

If you're not using an identity management system, you must now create on this server the accounts of all the users that will access the project server. This means creating accounts for all the Burn and Flame users. For this you need each user account's username, user ID, and user group as they are defined on the Flame clients.

  1. From the root account, open a shell.

  2. Create the user account, making sure to correctly enter their account's <user id>, <user group>, and <username>.

    sudo useradd -u <user id> -g <user group> <username>

  3. Follow the on-screen instructions.

  4. Once passwd is done, give the user administrative privileges:

    sudo usermod -aG wheel <username>
Note: With administrative privileges, the user can use the sudo command to run commands reserved to the root account.

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