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Pools

Overview

Pools in Smedge can be used to further configure how jobs get distributed to machines on your network. You can group machines into pools. Each job has a single pool to which it is assigned. Machines that belong to that pool will have priority in rendering that job.

The pool priority rules can get complex. A client will always do work on jobs that are assigned to pools to which that client belongs over any other work, even if the job has a lower priority than a job assigned to a pool to which the client does not belong.

Clients can be set up to allow them to render work that is assigned to a pool to which they do not belong as well. In the Client Information dialog box, you can uncheck Only render jobs in my pools. When this setting is checked, the client is "Pool Exclusive," meaning that if a job is assigned to a pool to which the client does not belong, that job will never be worked on by that client. When unchecked, the client is allowed to do work from other pools, even though it does not belong to them. In this case, the client will do "in-pool" work first, then start working on any "out-of-pool" jobs that are available.

There are two pools to which every client belongs, and which you cannot modify. First, there is the pool "Whole System" which is, strangely enough, a pool that covers every client that is connected. Second, each client's name can be used as a pool to force jobs to render only on that client. This simplifies situations where you just want to render on a single machine using Smedge.

Note that the pool "Whole System" is available through the main window's menus, but the individual client names will only appear in the Pool drop down list of the Submit Job window.