Posted by Kevin Merrill

There was a time when all printing was done directly from the workstation to a printer. As time rolled on, and companies grew, companies started to look for a better way to allow their users to print without having to purchase an individual printer for each user. With the invention of networks, companies again started to look for efficiencies in printing and network printing was born. As network printing began to become more commonplace it was soon realized that the printers couldn’t handle all the traffic, so print servers were born. Along with the inherent inefficiencies with print servers, today they have become almost standard across the globe.

Is there a better way? Print Server administrators have been asking this question for years. Traditionally, there have been 3 different models for managing printers in your environment; centralized print servers, distributed print servers, and unmanaged direct IP.

Centralized Print Servers
The first model is the “Centralized Print Server.” In this model, the print server(s) are located at company headquarters or a central data center. Because of the location of the server, all the jobs must travel from satellite offices to the server to be processed and then be sent back to the printers at the satellite location. This creates a large amount of WAN traffic, and can severely slow down the printing process. This also creates a single point of failure in the print flow. If the server goes down or the connection to the server gets severed, no one can print. This model also requires GPO’s and scripts to push out printers or giving the end user permission to self-install the shared queue.

Distributed Print Servers
The second model is the “Distributed Print Server” model. In this model, the print servers are distributed out to the individual sites. While this model eliminates the single point of failure of the “centralized” model it has the effect of creating multiple single points of failure across the company. This also has the effect of creating server sprawl, a management nightmare, resulting in the need to manage and maintain print queues across multiple servers. Like the “centralized” model this model also requires GPO’s and scripts to push out printers or giving the end user permission to self-install the shared queue.

Unmanaged Direct IP
The third model is the “Unmanaged Direct IP” model. In this model, all the printers are installed to the workstations as direct IP printers. While this model eliminates the single point of failure caused by print servers, it becomes a management nightmare, requiring support staff to touch each endpoint to install printers. Some of the biggest downsides to this model is that you have no management or insight into your print environment, high support costs, and almost guaranteed helpdesk calls.

A New Option
PrinterLogic’s Web Stack (formerly Printer Installer) software combines the three printing models to create a new fourth model, “Centrally Managed Direct IP.” PrinterLogic Web Stack takes the best of the three printing models and combines them in a serverless solution. Once installed on a 2008r2 or newer server, simply use your favorite deployment software to push out the PrinterLogic Web Stack client to the workstations. Once installed the client will convert the shared queues to direct IP queues that can now be centrally managed by the server hosting PrinterLogic Web Stack.

From PrinterLogic Web Stack’s Administration Console, you have complete management and control over your printing environment, from automated deployments based on Active Directory, IP Address, Hostname, MAC address, to driver and profile management, to auditing and reporting. All from one central pane of glass. Through PrinterLogic Web Stack’s self-service portal, you can also empower your end users to be able to self-install a printer if needed, all without giving them admin rights to their workstations.

With PrinterLogic Web Stack you can join the next iteration of printing. The Centrally Managed Direct IP world.

We’re in the era of Big Data. We want to be able to monitor, collect and analyze information of all kinds—our exercise, our sleep, our spending, our workflow—as conveniently and unobtrusively as possible with the ultimate aim of identifying opportunities for improvement, tweaking old habits and boosting performance.

As far as enterprise printing is concerned, we want to track printer usage across our network in order to cut wasteful printing and reduce the overuse of consumables. Which has an immediate and direct impact on our organizations’ bottom lines.

With traditional print management software, such as print servers, the ability to track printer usage is limited. This comes down to the software’s native tools as well as its basic architecture. You can examine historical print job data for a certain period by trawling through the logs from shared print queues, for example, but the process inefficient and is unlikely to yield any useful information that tells a larger story. The fragmentation of distributed environments with remote sites makes this even more difficult.

Another method to track printer usage is to collect SNMP information on things like page counts and toner levels from individual printers, but this can quickly become a matter of herding cats when you have a heterogeneous print environment with a mix of drivers, hardware from different manufacturers and a smattering of USB-connected printers. And even if you do succeed in gathering that information, making sense of it as a basis for efficiency initiatives is another ball of wax.

Third parties have tried to take advantage of this shortcoming by developing printer usage tracking software that will make the collection and audit of print data a tiny bit more manageable. But the problem here is that their solutions to track printer usage run atop the underlying server architecture. They don’t necessarily integrate with the seamlessness of a native solution. As a result, you have to manage your tracking software alongside your print management software, which adds one more console to oversee, one more component to juggle.

Furthermore, “layered” solutions like these are usually at the mercy of the print management software passing along the required information. If something changes in how the printer usage tracking software interfaces with the print servers—say, through an upgrade or migration to a new solution—then its ability to track printer usage could be hobbled or even prevented. That creates unwanted scenarios where you find yourself weighing the pros and cons of holding off on a critical security patch while waiting for your printer usage tracking software to be updated for compatibility.

That’s why PrinterLogic is the best way to monitor and track printer usage across your organization. Our next-generation print management software has powerful built-in print auditing and reporting tools that have access to core-level printing data, which allows you to gather detailed, comprehensive information from every nook and cranny of your print environment—even from printers connected via USB.

With PrinterLogic’s advanced print management software, you can not only track printer usage but arrange that data in practical ways. You can select the company’s top 10, 25 or even 100 heaviest printer users. Or identify the users who are routinely printing large or all-color jobs. Or view how many pages each department is printing within a given time period. Or organize print jobs by the date or computer on which they were printed.

PrinterLogic also goes one step further. Instead of simply gathering data like many printer usage tracking software solutions, PrinterLogic is able to compile, analyze and distribute that information. That’s invaluable when it comes to clear and effective decision-making. Now department heads can be kept informed of their consumables usage or their most print-intensive users through regular e-mails. The organization as a whole can get practical consolidation guidance to reduce infrastructure.

All that plus greater ease of management and enhanced enterprise printing features. And the best part? That will be tallying up the incredible ROI.

If you have ever come across the need to move printers from one print server to another, then you know how much of a headache it can be. If you still have the legacy Windows 2003 print server then it can even be more daunting. What’s more, if you want to stay ahead of the curve and your server refresh time is near, then you’re wanting to find a quick and straightforward way to move the print services over. The clearest path to migration is to upgrade in stages.

Stage 1: Migrate from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2012 R2: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj134150(v=ws.11).aspx (the caveat here is that the old server must only have the print services role on it and no other roles or it will cause issues with the other roles).

Stage 2: Go from Windows Server 2012 to Windows Server 2016: https://www.faqforge.com/windows/migrate-print-services-server-2012-server-2016/

The steps are straightforward and will take a bit of time to make sure everything is done correctly. They also have scenarios where it may not be possible to migrate off the server onto a new one. As improved as the new servers can be, sometimes to go to them from an old server can be more trouble than just starting over from scratch on that new server. If you’re contemplating starting over then WAIT! There is an easier way to do it than you think: PrinterLogic.

PrinterLogic has a print management solution that migrates printers away from print servers (yes, even Windows 2003 print servers), and actually allows you to start managing direct IP printers connected to workstations instead. No more print servers to manage, no more headaches when updating server operating systems, and no more bottlenecks for printing. All you need is a server to host PrinterLogic.

The software itself has many benefits and here are a few for quick reference:

• Management of direct IP printers (jobs are spooled locally from the workstations and sent directly to the printers)
• If the management server goes offline or loses connectivity to a site then anyone with a printer can still print
• Easier management tools available through a webpage UI experience
• Eliminate scripting and GPOs to deploy printers
• Print tracking to see how much printing is going on and who is printing what
• And so much more…

The steps to migrate off a Windows 2003, 2008, 2012, or 2016 print server are as easy as 1, 2, 3. First, you install PrinterLogic on your new server. Second you use a built-in import tool to select the printers from your print server and import them into the management interface. Third you push out a software client to each desktop which will auto-convert the shared queues from the print server into managed direct IP printers in the background. It won’t alert the end users and runs in the background as a system service so you don’t have to elevate the user’s privileges.

The process of migrating the printers over is usually no more than 30 seconds a queue and it’ll keep going one by one until they are all copied over and ready for use. As you push out the agent that converts the queues from shared to direct IP, you’ll be able to keep the print server on and everyone will be able to continue to print. As soon as the roll out of the client is finished and all the queues have converted, you’ll be able to move forward with a new server and a better print management solution. In the future, if you need to move the software from your new server to a newer server then all you do is run a backup command in the windows command prompt or PowerShell and restore it on a new server that is running a blank instance of PrinterLogic. Migrations just got a whole lot easier!

Getting the right printers to the right people at the right time can be a challenge. You have a wide range of methods you can choose from, ranging from teaching the end user how to connect to a shared printer all the way to writing a logon script to install printers based on specific criteria. It seems like however you decide to accomplish the goal, there are always obstacles. There will always be that one person who doesn’t want to learn how to double-click a printer they need and instead wants the printer to show up automatically whenever they log into their computer no matter where they are geographically. There are also those times when your automatic process simply doesn’t work because of unpredictable computer flaws that can happen. Worst of all, what if you are in charge of figuring out how to auto-deploy printers to not only Windows workstations but Mac workstations as well? The task can be daunting and frustrating.

There is a solution that makes all those headaches go away. No need for end user training, no need for writing scripts, no need for print servers, and it’s not a problem if you have Windows and Mac users. The solution is a part of the print management software from PrinterLogic. It allows IT staff to auto-deploy printers based on specific criteria. You can auto-deploy printers based on Active Directory User, Computer, Group, Container, or OU. You can also deploy printers based on the end user’s computer IP Address, Hostname, or Mac address. It works across both Mac and Windows to provide a unified experience that automates printer installation as well being consistent in its performance.

The best thing about auto-deployments through PrinterLogic is how easy it is to implement the solution. You spin up a virtual server running Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, or Windows Server 2016 and run an executable provided by PrinterLogic. That will take you to an administration web page where you add printers. The software is designed to directly migrate you either off your existing print server or take your direct IP connected printers and add them into the solution. There are import tools that help facilitate that process so it’s smooth and easy. Once you have the printers added just simply push out a software client to each workstation (Windows and Mac). The client is programmed to take over the existing printers on the workstation and provide a seamless transition into a new way of print management. With PrinterLogic, you manage direct IP printers connected to computers. That allows the workstations to spool and submit jobs locally. It’s designed to remove the bottleneck that a print server is and give you improved tools that you previously needed with a print server.

My favorite deployment type is the IP Address deployment option; it allows you to specify an IP Address range that you want printers to be deployed to. If a user enters that IP Address range on their laptop then they will automatically get that site’s printers installed. When the laptop leaves the IP Address range then the printers will be removed and a new set of printers can be added for a new range. The printers essentially follow the traveling users and they never need to call the help desk to get printers installed when they go to new locations.

Finally, if you run into that one user that prefers their printers added manually by selecting from a list, then PrinterLogic can help. PrinterLogic provides users a self-service web page where they can access printers they have permissions to view and install them with a single click. You can even upload a map to help users identify where their nearest printer is. Gone are the days of scripting, GPOs, and user trainings to auto-deploy printers. You can also say goodbye to print servers on top of all that!