I’ve had a couple of customers ask if satellite really does work, and I can confirm that it does. I set up a couple of Windows 7 machines for satellite, and the mental ray diagnostics show the satellite machine being used (I’ve changed the computer names for demo purposes):
// INFO : JOB 0.n progr: 89.8% rendered on MTL-SATELLITE:7020.6 // INFO : JOB 0.13 progr: 90.9% rendered on MTL-MASTER.13 // INFO : JOB 0.6 progr: 91.9% rendered on MTL-MASTER.6 // INFO : JOB 0.n progr: 92.9% rendered on MTL-SATELLITE:7020.7 // INFO : JOB 0.12 progr: 93.9% rendered on MTL-MASTER.12 // INFO : JOB 0.n progr: 94.9% rendered on MTL-SATELLITE:7020.2 // INFO : JOB 0.n progr: 95.9% rendered on MTL-SATELLITE:7020.4 // INFO : JOB 0.10 progr: 96.9% rendered on MTL-MASTER.10 // INFO : JOB 0.n progr: 97.9% rendered on MTL-SATELLITE:7020.0 // INFO : JOB 0.n progr: 98.9% rendered on MTL-SATELLITE:7020.5
MTL-SATELLITE is the satellite computer, 7020 is the port used by the Satellite service, and the number after the period is the thread number.
One gotcha: satellite didn’t work if I used a different port on each computer. For example, if I changed the port to 7004 on the Master, then satellite didn’t work.
eX-SI 
Satellite rendering in Soft 2011sp1 works well for render regions and still frames. However, the RAM on the slave machine(s) gets gobbled until MR crashes during satellite assisted sequences. Memory leak?
-Derek