Help Desk

What is HQueue?

HQueue is Houdini’s distributed render and simulation manager.

It is a general-purpose job management system that distributes, monitors and manages tasks across a collection of computing nodes, or client machines. It specializes in managing render and dynamic simulation jobs submitted from Houdini. However, it be customized to work with any job from any application.

HQueue Documentaion

The Main Components:

HQueue Server

This machine runs the HQueue server process, which is the system’s engine. The server schedules and distributes jobs to the other machines, hosts the web interface, and stores the job scheduling data.

HQueue Clients

These are the machines that run the HQueue client processes. They receive and execute jobs assigned by the server. The HQueue clients are also known as client machines, compute nodes, or render nodes.

Workstations

These are the machines that users submit jobs from using interactive Houdini, non-graphical Houdini or another appliciation. The machines submit jobs to the server and the server distributes the jobs to the clients.

Shared Folder Server

This machine hosts the storage backend for the farm, typically a shared network folder or drive accessible by all machines in the farm. The workstations transfer input files onto the shared folder that are then read by the client machines when executing jobs. The client machines also write the output files onto the shared folder that are then accessed by the workstations.

Houdini License Server

This machine hosts the required licenses to run interactive Houdini on the workstations and non-interactive Houdini, Mantra, and Karma on the client machines.