Asking Jeff for frames...
Long story short, AWS/Deadline wasn’t for me. I went through the process of installing and setting it up for a trial run but eventually decided not to pursue it further for a couple of reasons:
- Instance Availability: I rarely had access to the desired instances and was charged for the hope they’d eventually become available. During testing, it seemed like AWS had only one instance for the whole of Continental Europe.
- Costs and Structure: The service structure felt like “death by a million paper cuts.” There was an infinite scroll of services being charged just to keep an arguably useless structure offline. It would have been attractive had it worked reliably. A dedicated human resource to manage it would be highly recommended.
That said, here’s my notes of the process i followed, up to the point of setting up a custom Linux AMI for current Redshift versions.
Navigate to the AWS Thinkbox webiste and click the Downloads menu item.
Navigate directly to the AWS Thinkbox Downloads site
Repository Install
- from: Deadline-{version}-windows-installers.zip
install: DeadlineRepository-{version}-windows-installer - MongoDB prompt, install or connect to an existing one
- Create Encryption certificates & password
- Create Admin User Credentials
- install process about 5mins
DL Client Install
- from: Deadline-{version}-windows-installers.zip
install: DeadlineClient-{version}-windows-installer - prompt: check Set full read/write access for files for all users
- prompt: check Remote Connection Server (required for AWS portal)
- prompt: Connect to local repo using previously created Certificate and Password
Check the TSL certificate has Read/Write Permissions - Create User Admin
Prompt: Install Launcher as Service, unchecked
Prompt: RCS user and ports, accept defaults
Generate HTTPS certificates & pass - Installation process 10 mins
DL Monitor Launch
- check both certificate files have Full Control access for the active user:
C:\DeadlineDatabase10\certs\Deadline10Client.pfx
C:\Program Files\Thinkbox\Deadline10\certs\Deadline10RemoteClient.pfx - search for DL Launcher app and open it
- Launcher and Monitor might fail for on the first launch, due to file permission. If permissions are set well, all should work on the second launch.
- Right click the Launcher taskbar icon and start the worker to check its also working.
- The title window from both Monitor and Worker should be pointing to C:\DeadlineRepository10, and the worker should be listed as idle on the monitor’s worker list
DL Monitor switch to RCS
- Launch RCS through the launcher if not already running
- Monitor: click Switch Server, and switch to remote
- add the IP of the current machine along with the certificate previously set (ProgramFiles)
- reboot the Worker
- The title window from both Monitor and Worker should be pointing to {ip_address:port}
AWS - IAM Admin User
- log in to AWS console with a root user or whatever works for you
- Navigate to Access Management > Users, add user
- The User policy is more important than the name, but be descriptive enough
- Select Attach Existing Policies Directly
- search for ‘admin’ and attach ‘AdministratorAccess’ policy
- Create Access Keys, go to users and select the user, look for create key, select first option (CLI), ignore the recommendation and download and keep the csv
AWS - IAM User
- in the AWS console
- Navigate to Access Management > Users, add user
- The User policy is more important than the name, but be descriptive enough
- Select Attach Existing Policies Directly
- search for ‘AWSThinkbox’ and attach ‘AWSPortalAdminPolicy’ and ‘DeadlineResourceTrackerAdminPolicy’
- Create Access Keys, go to users and select the user, look for create key, select first option (CLI), ignore the recommendation and download and keep the csv
DL AWSPortal Install
- Make Sure Monitor and RCS are running. The installer may fail the first time, try again:
from: Deadline-{version}-windows-installers.zip
install: AWSPortalLink-{version}-windows-installer - For the account user and pass, use your windows administrator user and MS account password. Or whatever works for u
- Skip IP override
- Allow firewall ports
- AWS credentials, insert Keys from AWS Admin User csv.
- Confirm Windows Credentials
- skip Root Directories
- install
- on Windows Services, check for 2 AWS services running
Sources
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgelsbaXpYE&list=PLhYsMveWZwEQ2DokGzhqaMJhIuOEJivWD&index=1
- https://docs.thinkboxsoftware.com/products/deadline/10.1/1_User%20Manual/manual/download-deadline.html