Distribution of files in a transcoding-farm

[taner]

Hi Steinar,

I have a question.
How does FFAStrans decide which machine in a transcoding-farm have to pick up a file or takeover the next step of a workflow?
2 of 5 machines in our transcoding-farm are much stronger than the other 3 ones.
My observation is that when it comes to pick up a file (all machines have nothing to do at this moment) sometimes the strongest machines start with the workflow but more often the other ones.
Also when a workflow contains 2 transcoding-processors both transcodings of this workflow start on 1 machine, often one of the 3 not so strong machines.

I assume there is no kind of hardware balancing or similar?

It is not a problem in any way, I'm just curious.

Best

Taner

[admin]

FFAStrans has a pool of jobs that are picked up by any member of the farm. They all go through a loop of "asking" for jobs so it's a first-come, first-served principle. There used to be a "better" logic for this but at that time it was a bit flawed so i abandoned it for the mean time. But I'm going to look at it again to make it smarter. Also, in the next version (0.8.0) you can include or exclude members of the farm for workflows. That way you can make the better machines take the harder jobes and the weaker take the easier ones.

-steinar

[taner]

Sounds great, thanks !