Managing Backburner Jobs with Backburner Monitor

Backburner Monitor allows you to pause, restart, and assign jobs and tasks to different render nodes. You also use Backburner Monitor to create and manage render node groups and verify the state of the different Backburner servers are up and running.

Backburner Monitor uses user privileges so if your facility uses network users with various level of access, only the tasks a user has access to are visible in Backburner Monitor.

Note: You used to monitor and manage Backburner queues with the Backburner Web Monitor on a web browser. Due the disappearance of Adobe Flash, you must now use the Backburner Monitor, a standalone desktop application available on Rocky Linux and macOS.

To install Backburner Monitor do one of the following:

Install a Flame Family product version 2021.1 (or later) on the workstation.
Install standalone Backburner 2021.1 (or later) also installs the Backburner Monitor application.

To start Backburner Monitor:

macOS: Applications folder Autodesk Backburner Monitor
Rocky Linux: Applications menu Autodesk Backburner Monitor

Tip: If you need to run Backburner Monitor on a workstation but do not want to also install Backburner, simply copy the application from one workstation to another.

For macOS: Applications folder Autodesk Flame Backburner Monitor
For Rocky Linux: /opt/Autodesk/backburner/monitor/

For this to work, both workstations must be using the same OS.

Using Backburner Monitor

Once started, Backburner Monitor displays a Backburner Manager selection list and four tabs:

Jobs: Stop, start, delete, and archive Backburner jobs in the current Backburner manager queue.
Servers: List Backburner servers available to the current Backburner manager, edit server availability, delete absent servers, or reset server performance index.
Server Groups: List and manage Backburner server groups.
Archive: List, reactivate, or delete archived jobs.

To reset Backburner Monitor to its default settings

Select Reset Settings.

Selecting a Backburner Manager

You select a Backburner Manager to manage jobs processed by its servers.

To select a Backburner Manager:

From the Manager drop-down list, select a manager.

If the Backburner Manager is not in the list:

In most cases, the Backburner Manager you're looking for does not appear in the list because you're connecting remotely into the network through a VPN. In this case, select Connect to... to connect to the Backburner using its IP address.

The first time you launch Backburner Monitor, it connects to the Backburner Manager running on the same workstation. After this first launch, Backburner Monitor connects to the last Backburner Manager used.

Connecting to a Specific Backburner Manager at Launch

If you use the command line to launch Backburner Monitor, you can specify from the command line the Backburner Manager to connect:

Open a shell.
Change directory to /opt/Autodesk/backburner/monitor/
Type ./bbm -m <IPADDRESS:PORT>

where <IPADDRESS:PORT> are the address and port of the Backburner Manager.
Press Enter.

Backburner Monitor starts and connects to the requested Backburner Manager.

Troubleshooting: Recommended Version of Backburner Manager Is...

You connect to a Backburner Manager and get this symbol . Its tooltip says Recommended version of Backburner Manager is or higher.

This is only a warning to indicate that there is mismatch between the version of Backburner Monitor you are currently using and the version of the Backburner Manager you currently connected to.

While it is better to have matching versions, if Backburner Monitor can access a Backburner Manager, it can safely manage its job queue. Operations such as refreshes and accessing job details can be slower when there is a version mismatch.

You can safely ignore this warning. That being said, try and update Backburner when possible to access the latest performance and bug fixes.

Editing the Settings of a Backburner Manager

Click to edit the settings of the currently selected Backburner Manager.

Some Backburner Manager settings apply to the Manager itself, others define the default settings for Backburner jobs. You can override default job settings for any job in the Jobs tab.

You can edit the following settings:

Logging level
Mail server for email notifications
Administrators and administrator groups
Job retention
Number of concurrent jobs
Number of retries
Time between retries
How to handle completed jobs: keep, delete, or archive

Note: Backburner Manager setting used to be managed through environment variables. Starting with 2021.2, this is no longer the case: always use the new Backburner Monitor to edit these settings.

Logging level:

Error: Fatal errors that halt the processing of a job.
Warning: Operations that complete with non-fatal errors.
Info: Successful operations, possibly with minor faults or caveats.
Debug and Extended Debug: Detailed state information, including TCP/IP packet information. Helpful in tracking down bugs.

Security:

Control who is an administrator. You can assign the administrator role to any OS user or OS user group.
Only an administrator can edit the Backburner Manager settings, manage Server Groups, edit Servers and reset their performance index. An administrator can always manage jobs, even jobs created by other users.
Restrict Root: Enable Restrict Root to prevent remote root access to the Backburner Manager through Backburner Monitor. Enabling this setting also ensures that no jobs are sent as root. Restrict Root is enabled by default.

Note: Only disable this setting if you understand the risks of provide root access to a remote host, or of executing jobs as root.

Default Mail Server:

The SMTP server through which email notifications are sent. You can override this setting for a specific job by selecting it in the Jobs tab and clicking Edit.

Job Handling on Completion:

Define how jobs are handled once complete: leave in queue, archive, or delete.
You can override this setting for a specific job by selecting it in the Jobs tab and clicking Edit.

Managing and Editing Backburner Jobs

The Jobs tab presents the jobs associated with the selected Backburner Manager.

You can:

Activate any job
Suspend any job
Restart any job

indicates a job you cannot edit. Only an administrator or the job owner can:

Archive or restore a job
Modify a job settings
Delete a job

Restarting a Job

Restarting a job means starting it from the beginning. If another job is already being processed, the selected job becomes pending.

Suspending a Job

Suspending a job pauses its processing by the Backburner Server. While a job is suspended, you can edit its settings.

To un-suspend a job, you can either restart it or activate it.

Restart or Activate?

You can Activate or Restart a suspended job.

Activating a suspended job picks up processing from where it left off: tasks already completed are not re-done.

Restarting a job halts all processing for the job, clears the server of all job-related temporary files (including completed tasks), and restarts the job from its first task. Restarting is identical to resubmitting the job from the creative application.

Deleting a Job

Deleting a job removes it from the queue and the Backburner system, but does not destroy source material or rendered results.

Important: You cannot undo a job delete. If you believe you might need to resubmit the job, archive it instead.

Archiving a Job

Archiving removes a completed job from the job queue and reduces clutter. You want to archive a completed job over deleting it to preserve all the information needed to re-submit it.

An archived job contains only the job details (metadata). The archive does not contain source material or rendered frames, so archiving a job has no effect on the associated media. Jobs can be archived automatically on completion.

You manage archived jobs from the Archive tab.

Customizing the Display

You can edit how Jobs display in the table.

Use to filter for jobs according to name, type, state, description, or user.
Click a column header to sort by that column.
Right-click the column header to display even more data.

Editing Job Settings

indicates a job you cannot edit. Only an administrator or the job owner can edit it.

To edit a job settings:

Display the Jobs tab.
Right-click a job and select Edit.

You can edit the following job settings:

Edit the description
Set the job priority. A smaller number indicates a higher priority. Jobs with a higher priority are processed before ones with a lower priority.
How to handle the job on its completion
Edit email notification settings
Assign the job to a specific Backburner server or Backburner server group

You can view the following information:

Job name
Job type
Job status, submission date and time, and duration
List of dependencies
Related task errors, if any
List of tasks
Advanced information in the form a the job xml

Assigning a Job to a Server

In the Job Settings, you can assign a job to a server group or pick specific servers.

A server group is a collection of servers. Assigning a job to a server group ensures only servers of that group process the job.

To assign a job to a server group:

Display the Jobs tab.
Right-click a job and select Edit.
Display the Server Assignment tab.
Set Assigned Server Group .

Or you can simply select one or more servers from the list of available servers to have the job execute on these.

Maximum Server Count controls the number of render nodes made available for the job. This is specified when the job is created, but you can edit it. 0 (zero) assigns the job to all servers in the group or the servers you selected.

Email Notifications

The Manager Settings apply to all jobs. But you can always customize the email settings of a job.

To customize email settings of a job:

Display the Jobs tab.
Right-click the job and select Edit.
In the Job Details window, edit the email settings and click Save.

Managing Backburner Servers

The Servers tab provides an overview of each render node available to the selected Backburner Manager.

If you are an administrator for this Backburner Manager, or part of its administrator group, you can:

Delete an absent server
Set server availability
Create server groups

Tip: Click

to toggle the Tree view. The Tree view is especially useful to get an overview of the Weekly Schedule or the details of the jobs being currently processed.

Deleting a Server

You can delete only nodes marked by the system as absent.

Before deleting a node, consider archiving jobs that made use of it, to preserve job details, including the nodes to which tasks were sent.

To delete an absent server:

Display the Servers tab.
Right-click the server and select Delete.

Deleting a render node only removes it from the database maintained by the Backburner Manager. It does not delete any software from the node itself.

Set Server Availability

You can set periods of availability for the selected server. A server only processes jobs when flagged available. When unavailable, the server still appears in the Servers tab, but won't be assigned jobs by the Backburner Manager.

By default, nodes are always available.

To set server Availability:

Display the Servers tab.
Right-click the server and select Edit.
Display Weekly Schedule.
Set the server availability by clicking in the schedule: green for available, red for unavailable.

Tip: Toggle a whole day by clicking the days-of-the-week buttons. The same can be done by clicking the hours column headers.

Performance Index

The performance index is a value in the range [0-1] indicating the performance level of the server, relative to other servers on the same job. A score of 1 indicates this is the best-performing server.

You cannot set the performance index, only reset it. But if a the node gets a hardware update, consider resetting its performance index.

To reset a server performance index:

Display the Servers tab.
Right-click the server and select Reset Performance Index.

Managing Server Groups

A server group is a named collection of render nodes that is treated like a single node. Some applications can be configured to submit jobs to a server group.

Server groups are useful to create groups according to hardware capabilities such as GPU specifications. Server groups do not restrict the ability to assign render nodes to particular jobs.

Only the Backburner Manager administrators can manage server groups.

To create a server group:
Display the Server Groups tab.
Click Create.
Name the server group.
Select the servers for that group.
Click Save.

Managing Archives

indicates a job you cannot edit. Only an administrator or the job owner can archive or restore it.

Use the Archive tab to manage archived jobs. Archiving removes a completed job from the job queue, reducing clutter. You archive a job over deleting it to preserve the information needed to re-submit it at a latter date.

Important: The job archive contains only job details (metadata). It does not contain source material or rendered frames, so archiving a job has no effect upon the associated media. Jobs can be archived automatically on completion.

To archive a job:

Display the Jobs tab.
Right-click a job and select Archive.

The job moves to the Archives tab.

To restore a job:

Display the Archive tab.
Right-click the job and select Reactivate.

The job moves to the Jobs tab queue, and appears Suspended. Restart the job to process it as soon as a server becomes available.

Note: [Restricted] indicates that you cannot view the job details. You can still restore it.