Video summary
The video explores the heart of Blender's operations, focusing on the server room where the software is built and maintained. This facility has been central to the studio's workflow for about five years and houses essential infrastructure including network storage, rendering machines, and CPU renderers that support various departments from development to editorial work. The narrator, an IT manager, highlights his hands-on role in maintaining both internal and external servers, expressing a deep passion for the intersection of electronics and software. He enjoys assembling custom hardware solutions, such as creating specialized motherboards with limited space for components, which reflects a unique blend of analog craftsmanship and digital functionality that defines the team's approach to their technology stack.
A significant theme discussed is the transition away from physical hardware toward cloud-based virtual machines, marking what the creators describe as the end of an era for their in-house data center. While they plan to migrate their infrastructure to managed cloud services, this shift represents a departure from their long-standing tradition of building and managing their own servers. The team acknowledges that while they will retain control over the software development, they are letting go of direct hardware management. This change is viewed as an interesting but inevitable moment in Blender's history, prompting discussions about decommissioning old machines and adapting to new operational models where everything runs remotely rather than on local equipment.
The episode also serves as a nostalgic journey through Blender's history, featuring a newly created museum exhibit that showcases artifacts from the early days of the software. Viewers are shown items dating back to 1992, including original Doom level mods used for New Year's cards, notebooks from the initial development phase, and early game ports like Hi World and Lost Ride. The collection includes vintage manuals, such as the 2002 version for Blender 2.0, which sold thousands of copies before being succeeded by later editions. These physical relics provide a tangible connection to the project's origins, illustrating how far the open-source community has come since its humble beginnings in the early 1990s.
Beyond the historical artifacts, the video captures the human side of the Blender team through candid interactions and behind-the-scenes moments. There are lighthearted scenes involving troubleshooting network issues, joking about broken cables, and even a brief segment on driving mishaps that serve as cautionary tales for others. The atmosphere is one of camaraderie and shared experience, where technical challenges are met with humor and collective problem-solving. Ultimately, the video concludes by celebrating both the legacy of past hardware achievements and the exciting future ahead as Blender continues to evolve while preserving its rich heritage in a dedicated museum space.
Read the full video transcript
[music]
I would describe the server room as the
place where we build everything.
>> The people that do the tour often say,
"Oh, this is where Blender is built."
>> It makes an impression on you. Like you
go in the first time.
>> The first time I saw it's very dark
inside.
>> It houses all the machines that are
currently building Blender and have been
building Blender for I think since we
started moving into here. So 5 years ago
I guess
>> the server room is still showing our
independence
because almost all of the facilities
that developers need is still running
here. Welcome to my den. This is server
room at the blender HQ. There are few
things which are running here. There is
the network storage for the studio
itself including SVM and render and
whatnot. Editorial department doing
documentaries and things. There is few
machines which also do CPU rendering.
This is the buildbot. This is where
Blender is being built. Almost every
commit it's being built on those
machines on all the platforms.
I work at Bender as an IT manager. I am
responsible for the network here for
servers that we run internally and
externally in the data center. I
maintain IT in a more general sense. If
it has a USB port or plug, I probably
touched it in this building at some
point. Yeah, I love making things
myself. Yeah, the intersection between
uh electronics and software where it's
not just analog stuff but really digital
electronics with a piece of software
that you run on microcontrollers or
connect to computers is is a very
fascinating one and it's a a sweet spot
where I where I like to play
>> uh special delivery
>> pizza anybody
What we've got here is uh basically your
[music] standard four motherboards uh
that you would normally find in a little
bit larger case. So motherboard, there's
just enough room to put a CPU and cooler
in there. There's a hard [music] drive
and of course a power supply and a
little bit of space for air to pass
through so you can actually cool the
thing. Yeah.
>> Smooth operator.
>> You made a painting or something.
I'm sorry. I went through a little bit
more expense than you might maybe have.
>> Oh, Jesus.
>> This is fancy.
>> I thought you might like it. It's
>> like a UFO.
>> This is actually the first time I've
seen it open with the lights on.
>> The light show.
It is the top of just a cluster render
cluster that was built 15 years ago to
render the movie Cintel on. I found one
of the motherboards back and I have a
couple, but uh this is one of the
motherboards that was in there. This is
a photo album I recently found back
where I was uh basically cutting out
holes to fit in power supplies, pieces
of motherboard on a kind of a metal
frame.
>> Yeah.
Hey.
>> Hello. [laughter]
Is it trash?
>> The trash. Yeah. Yeah.
>> So, you had four of them in in in in a
cabinet. And if hard drive in one of the
middle ones dies, then you need to
remove the entire thing, unscrew all the
motherboard, then get that blade and
then you can replace things. I I didn't
do it to, you know, consumer grade
standards, but it's definitely a file
was involved. On paper, it would have
like looked great. [clears throat]
>> Sorry, Sergey.
>> Well, you tried. [laughter]
>> We also have a data center uh in
Amsterdam where we have a number of
machines. They've been running quite
long now and we're thinking of doing
something else with them. So we might be
uh uh doing a move to the cloud uh where
we have it on virtual machines uh not
completely outsourced but something we
manage but run somewhere else. It's an
end of an era. I like hardware. I like
playing with uh with machines. I like uh
putting machines together. Having to
consider taking all those machines out,
removing them u decommissioning them and
basically saying okay everything runs
somewhere else. Yeah, that will be uh
that will be an interesting moment.
[music]
>> [music]
[music]
>> We are making glass cabinets
for the history of blunder exhibit where
we put in stuff from the 20s in the
early 2000s.
>> I kind of It reminds me of playing with
Legos.
>> I have this.
>> Yeah,
>> but on the picture it doesn't say it
>> like how
with this rock and then the hole has to
be on the back. But what is the front
and what is the back?
I think it too hard to hold the glass.
>> Ah, then it should be on the inside,
right?
>> Ah, [groaning and screaming]
welcome to the first edition of the
Blender Museum. First, we are going to
look at the show real that we made in
1992
and we also called the real Blender
because it sounded cool, right? We even
made in a New Year's card which is the
office and it was a Doom level mod. Look
at this. This notebook is at least
[snorts]
33 years old as well. And it has all the
things in it that I was doing when I was
developing
Blender. See a notebook which is exactly
this.
Here's a game that we did. Hi world, the
weird character in the geometric world.
And this is also the Lost Ride game
which we ported to PlayStation. And now
we got to 98. Here you see the oldest
Blender manual, the original old Blender
logo. The oldest Blender manual that I
didn't make. This is the 2.0 manual.
This was 2002. Thousands of copies be
sold of this. And this ends in 20067.
this cabinet.
Uh I can finally uh turn on
the LED effects of that thing again. And
now it is working.
serve around.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. The last
name.
The decision was that we keep control
ourselves for the software but that we
are going to give up on uh having the
hardware ourselves.
>> Honestly, I'm tagging along with with
AR. So, uh the plan is mostly on his
side. Uh he just wanted to show me the
show me uh how how it was done I guess
before my time here.
>> This my friend
is €2 of cable.
What is broken though? Which one?
>> I don't know. It just doesn't doesn't
give me internet.
>> It doesn't light up.
>> So maybe there's a thing.
>> It's a wireless cable. [laughter]
>> Good luck. [laughter]
>> Hello, sir.
>> Morning.
>> Welcome to the summer.
>> It's a perfect day to move some servers
around, isn't it? [laughter]
Where are those servers, man? Right
there.
>> Oh, right.
>> I used to work at the company that ran
that data center. Uh, it got taken over
by somebody else. I left the company,
but I've been, you know, before I was
working here, I was actually already
helping Blender with uh with their
infrastructure in that data center.
>> It's the time to open it up, I Yeah,
it's that one and that one.
>> Right.
>> So, that's our old infrastructure.
That's what we started. Then we expanded
and then we wanted to expand again, but
now we're going. It's what it is. These
are the old servers. I asked Danny
yesterday if everything is off and he
said, "Well, I shut it down, so it
should be off." These are I suggest that
we use a bag for cabling, a bag for uh
the cage nuts and other stuff. We have
some spares. Can put it in another bag.
>> No need to cry, aren't I'm not crying,
man. What's that sticker? Oh, look at
that. I never saw that. That's Danny's
handle. It's probably Sergey that put it
there when he was doing something with
Danny remote. Oh, that's awesome. Shall
we do a selfie? Grab a cable so you can
yank it.
>> [music]
[music]
>> I wonder how old these are. Uh I didn't
see any data manufacturer here uh on the
front. So
>> that's our history.
>> This is splendor. It has been taken
apart. The red button should not press
the red button.
>> We need some people to help lift stuff
up.
[music]
Oh, that makes sense.
[music]
I've been uh giving the the wheel to
many people from Blender now and almost
every time we had an accident because
especially when you go under the bridge
people panic and then they suddenly
start with the cars and then stop. So
Sergey crashed and Andy crashed and that
was easier for me to tell other people
how to do it.
[music]
Come
on.