From d7a7780a87f38e56c84b1a446f6e9ef24b507eae Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: doctorpangloss <@hiddenswitch.com>
Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2024 12:15:30 -0800
Subject: [PATCH] Distributed comfyui docs

---
 README.md | 79 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 79 insertions(+)

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@@ -338,6 +338,85 @@ The default installation includes a fast latent preview method that's low-resolu
 
 Ctrl can also be replaced with Cmd instead for macOS users
 
+# Distributed, Multi-Process and Multi-GPU Comfy
+
+This package supports multi-processing across machines using RabbitMQ. This means you can launch multiple ComfyUI backend workers and queue prompts against them from multiple frontends.
+
+## Getting Started
+
+ComfyUI has two roles: `worker` and `frontend`. An unlimited number of workers can consume and execute workflows (prompts) in parallel; and an unlimited number of frontends can submit jobs. All of the frontends' API calls will operate transparently against your collection of workers, including progress notifications from the websocket.
+
+To share work among multiple workers and frontends, ComfyUI uses RabbitMQ or any AMQP-compatible message queue like SQS or Kafka.
+
+### Example with RabbitMQ and File Share
+
+On a machine in your local network, install **Docker** and run RabbitMQ:
+
+```shell
+docker run -it --rm --name rabbitmq -p 5672:5672 rabbitmq:latest
+```
+
+Find the machine's main LAN IP address:
+
+**Windows (PowerShell)**:
+
+```pwsh
+Get-NetIPConfiguration | Where-Object { $_.InterfaceAlias -like '*Ethernet*' -and $_.IPv4DefaultGateway -ne $null } | ForEach-Object { $_.IPv4Address.IPAddress }
+```
+
+**Linux**
+
+```shell
+ip -4 addr show $(ip route show default | awk '/default/ {print $5}') | grep -oP 'inet \K[\d.]+'
+```
+
+**macOS**
+
+```shell
+ifconfig $(route get default | grep interface | awk '{print $2}') | awk '/inet / {print $2; exit}'
+```
+
+On my machine, this prints `10.1.0.100`, which is a local LAN IP that other hosts on my network can reach.
+
+On this machine, you can also set up a file share for models, outputs and inputs.
+
+Once you have installed this Python package following the installation steps, you can start a worker using:
+
+**Starting a Worker:**
+
+```shell
+# you must replace the IP address with the one you printed above
+comfyui-worker --distributed-queue-connection-uri="amqp://guest@guest10.1.0.100"
+```
+
+All the normal command line arguments are supported. This means you can use `--cwd` to point to a file share containing the `models/` directory:
+
+```shell
+comfyui-worker --cwd //10.1.0.100/shared/workspace --distributed-queue-connection-uri="amqp://guest@guest10.1.0.100"
+```
+
+**Starting a Frontend:**
+
+```shell
+comfyui --listen --distributed-queue-connection-uri="amqp://guest@guest10.1.0.100" --distributed-queue-frontend
+```
+
+However, the frontend will **not** be able to find the output images or models to show the client by default. You must specify a place where the frontend can find the **same** outputs and models that are available to the backends:
+
+```shell
+comfyui --cwd //10.1.0.100/shared/workspace --listen --distributed-queue-connection-uri="amqp://guest@guest10.1.0.100" --distributed-queue-frontend
+```
+
+You can carefully mount network directories into `outputs/` and `inputs/` such that they are shared among workers and frontends; you can store the `models/` on each machine, or serve them over a file share too.
+
+### Operating
+
+The frontend expects to find the referenced output images in its `--output-directory` or in the default `outputs/` under `--cwd` (aka the "workspace").
+
+This means that workers and frontends do **not** have to have the same argument to `--cwd`. The paths that are passed to the **frontend**, such as the `inputs/` and `outputs/` directories, must have the **same contents** as the paths passed as those directories to the workers.
+
+Since reading models like large checkpoints over the network can be slow, you can use `--extra-model-paths-config` to specify additional model paths. Or, you can use `--cwd some/path`, where `some/path` is a local directory, and, and mount `some/path/outputs` to a network directory.
+
 ## Community
 
 [Chat on Matrix: #comfyui_space:matrix.org](https://app.element.io/#/room/%23comfyui_space%3Amatrix.org), an alternative to Discord.
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