Royal Render Help

This is an overview about the Azure connection of Royal Render.

Each section will be handled in more detail in the following help pages.

What you have to do:

• Azure Registration:
  At first you have to have an account at Azure.
  
  
• RR Azure control:
  You need to setup a user and an application item in Azure. 
  RR will use these settings to control parts of Azure for you via their REST API (https).

• Network Connection:
  Then you have to setup a Virtual Network (VNet) in Azure. This network will be connected to all your VMs.
  You need a connection form your companies network to the VNet in Azure.
  You have 2 options:
  1) Use your companies firewall or get a new box (e.g. pfsense) to setup a Virtual Private Network (VPN) between your companies firewall and your VNet in Azure.
  2) Let RR create a OpenVPN gateway machine in Azure. The rrCloudManager then uses openVPN to connect to your VNet in Azure.
  
  
• VM image:
  You have to create a VM image with the OS and an RR service/daemon.
  You can either create it from scratch or use your RR-preinstalled images to add your applications.
  
  
• Setup your VM type and settings.
  Tell RR how many and which VM size/type you want to use. 
  Tell RR settings like the user that should be used for the rrClient or to which domain the VM should be added.
  There are two different ways for RR to create VMs: Azure Batch and non-Batch. Please see below for more information.

What RR is doing:

• Copy VM image
  Each VM requires an OS image that is used to boot the VM.
  RR creates a storage account in Azure and duplicates your source image.
  
  
• Create VMs

1. With Batch
   Batch is a system in Azure to spin up VMs and let them execute a task.
   These VMs are created as long as the task is running and then destroyed again.
   Batch offers you options that cannot be used otherwise:

• Low-Priority VMs
  All VMs that are currently not used at Azure are used for Low Priority batch.
  This includes VMs that have simply not been rented by a customer right now.
  And VMs that are withhold from being rented for capacity reasons.
• Renderer/App Licenses
  You can enable that the VMs have renderer/app licenses applied. 
  E.g. Maya, VRay, Arnold, ...

2. Non-Batch
   Without Batch, the rrCloudManager creates default VMs for you.
   A VM consists of 3 parts: The VM instance, an image of the created OS on a storage, a Network card.
   The VMs are created once and are shutdown and rebooted when used.
   
   

• Final OS setup
  The rrCloudService application is running on your image and waits for its configuration settings.
  It always does these system changes:
• It opens the firewall ports to allow   ping,  ssh/rpd, Azure batch ports, Royal Render ports. Windows only: file and printer sharing (includes Admin shares //machine/c$)
• Linux: Allow SSH login via user accounts (Azure Batch disables this)

Once the rrCloudManager sends its config, the service will do these changes to the system:

• Match the time zone with rrCloudManager
• Joins the domain 
• Linux: Mount the RR share to /mnt/RRNetShare
• Adds the rrService user to the local admin/wheel group
• Adds a local VM Administrator account to be used for remote sessions
• Adds the rrCloudManger IP and optionally additional servers to the host file 
• And of course it starts the rrClient

Once started, the rrClient will

• Mount project shares

Differences