Running Blender on Oracle Cloud
Jeff Davies writes:
Hi, my name is Jeff Davies. I use Blender to help make technical videos that describe how our software and networks function. As an Oracle employee, I was wondering if I could run Blender on our cloud GPU instances. I’ve released the first of a 2-part article on how to install Blender on the Oracle Cloud at a cost that is a fraction of what most render farms charge. If you’re interested in running Blender on Oracle Cloud, this set of articles is for you!
Thanks for the tutorial Jeff! It’s nice to see roll-your-own cloud rendering solutions on cloud platforms other than AWS and Azure. Does Oracle Cloud offer something equivalent to AWS “spot pricing” for the truly cheap among us? More information on spot pricing and Blender in this video: https://youtu.be/NkZ60lF-nKM?t=1368
No “spot pricing” at this time, but thanks for the question. I had no idea Amazon even offered that. The video link mentioned Amazon using the commodity hardware for that, so I’m not sure how that would affect your render times. Are there GPU’s with a spot-priced instance or is it all CPU based rendering?
I want to be careful not to turn this into a commercial for Oracle, but comparing prices is certainly a reasonable question all of us consumers have. If you’re OK with CPU based rendering, the Oracle Cost Estimator tool shows that you can use a machine for CPU based work only for a total of $8/month (less than many Patreon monthly charges) if you only use it for 4 hours a day, each day of the month. Of course, unlike the Amazon spot pricing model, that virtual machine is yours alone and you cannot be kicked off of it. If you reduce your usage further, you can get as low as $2/month.
Pricing for Oracle Cloud is looking good ($8/month is it even real?). Thanks for the guide! It’s quite a hassle to get the machines set up though so it’s not for everyone I suppose.
That $300 charge you mentioned on some farm for 6 hours of rendering sounds insane to me. Stay away from that service as far as possible :) The tests you did on the Oracle machines and the cost you got is still pretty high. On the farm I’m normally using (Xesktop and GarageFarm) it would cost me $5-$6 to render 140 2m frames. You gotta know what’s out there before you commit to a service :)
Thanks for the tip! Looking at both of those options I like Xesktop with the Tesla V100! Pricing seems pretty reasonable also.
No worries. Tesla V100 is looking really good indeed.