As noted in the introduction, end-user and administrator interaction with the Backburner network is mainly by way of the Backburner Monitor. This is the means by which you carry out the daily tasks of observing and controlling jobs and managing render nodes. For jobs, it includes pausing, stopping and restarting, changing priorities, archiving and restoring, and so on. For render nodes it includes setting render node availability schedules and assigning particular render nodes to particular jobs. It also includes creating and managing server groups—named collections of render nodes that can assist in implementing a job processing strategy, for render farms serving more than one creative application.
The Backburner Monitor is available in two forms:
The aim of this chapter is to introduce the UIs and general features of the monitors, with details on launching them and connecting to a Backburner Manager. It also introduces the main categories of the tasks you can perform: those that are related to jobs, and those for working with render nodes. Details on using the monitors are presented in later chapters.