Are Maya's render nodes required to be online with a monthly license?

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

We're relatively new to our Maya render farm setup via Backburner but now that we have it "working" we are very happy with the setup.

However, we have one remaining issue which we're not totally sure of the root casue.

With a monthly desktop subscription license type - are are render nodes "reqiuirded" to be constantly connected to the internet to enable license checking of some form?

Whilst batch rendering via backburner our render nodes will throw up errors every few weeks until we connect them online and open up Maya.

When we do this we can see that Maya does a license check so we are assuming that this is the logical reason for this? 

However, having 10 nodes online constantly just for this purpose alone is a little over the top and was never an expected requirement or ever clearly detailed anywhere.

Could anyone confirm this for us please?

Autodesk seemed to have made it nigh on impossible to actually speak to them directly so I'm posting here instead!

Thanks in advance!

[david.lau]

When you buy rent Maya software, it is standalone based.  I am going to confirm with the QA team as well.  Once it connects, it needs to connect to the our rental servers at least once every 2 weeks.

[Anonymous]

HI David,

I would expect this from the machines that we actually open/use Maya on but not on the nodes which are simply rendering via command line via backburner? Surely as long as the main machines that actually open Maya are checked and verified then the render nodes should be fine? 

Thanks

[david.lau]

There are 4 rendering options in Maya:

Maya Software (free)

mental ray (if you have network, you will have 5 extra nodes)

Hardware render (free)

Vector render (free)

http://mayastation.typepad.com/maya-station/2009/08/render-nodes-and-licensing.html

This means that you need to change your purchase from Desktop Rental to Perpetual Network.