Deleting Offline Render Nodes
 
 
 

When a Backburner Server connects to the Backburner Manager for the first time, the manager records the server's presence on the Backburner network in its database. If the server subsequently fails to reconnect to the manager during a new session, or goes offline for any reason, the manager marks it as absent. Servers can go offline temporarily for any number of reasons: during a render node shutdown or reboot, network glitches, hardware updates, and so on. The next time the server comes online, it will simply re-connect to the manager and appear as available once again.

However, if you know a render node will be offline permanently, or for a considerable time, you can delete it from the network. For example, if you uninstall the Backburner Server, it will remain listed in the manager's database. The old registration will cause a “ghost” node to appear in the list of servers, marked absent. The “ghost” can safely be deleted.

Deleting the node removes its entry from the database—it does not remove any software from the node itself. Some caution is nevertheless merited. Deleting a node can make it more difficult to troubleshoot jobs with problems, since it will be more difficult to determine which node carried out the flawed work. Before deleting a node, consider archiving jobs that made use of it, to preserve job details, including the nodes to which tasks were sent.

Use the following procedure to delete offline render nodes from the system. Deleting a render node removes its entry from the database maintained by the Backburner Manager. It does not delete any software from the node itself.

To delete a render node:

  1. On the Servers tab, select the node of interest, and click the Delete button.

    Only nodes marked by the system as absent can be deleted.

  2. Confirm the deletion in the dialog box that appears.

    The node is deleted and removed from the list.