“Virtual Network Computing” allows us to connect to our farm nodes and control them as if they have a mouse, keyboard and monitor plugged in. Otherwise we’d have to plug in each of those peripherals to each node to perform the non-automated tasks of network rendering like launching Blender and enabling slave mode. Even though I’m sure those tasks can be automated…I however don’t know how to set that up. But when a render fails or crashes, it’s convenient to “VNC-into” that node from a master computer to relaunch Blender or fix other hiccups in the automation.