And in the process, you could add a connector to your enterprise content management software to encourage users to scan the document directly into the Digital Document Imaging System system instead of printing it out.
Use printer policies. Want to reduce late-night printing, giant print runs which might be accidents , or heavy use of color? Use printer servers or other printer management controls to limit them. You can even have different policies for people at different levels of the organization. When Rutgers University implemented such a system, it saved them 55 million sheets of paper—a 44 percent reduction—in the first three years, while a Swedish university reduced paper use by 15 percent, he reports.
Other useful defaults are greyscale and draft mode, as well as shrink to fit, Null writes. Track individual use of printers. It assumes that the reader has knowledge of Print Server, Windows Server R2 and Windows Server , and related Microsoft products and technologies. The following contributing factors are presented in order from those that have the greatest, to those that have the least, effect on the scalability and performance of Print Server.
The number of clients that are connected to a print server can causes a large drain on system resources. System resources are allocated and ready for use immediately when a connection is established between the client and the server. The connection to a Print Server is established each time a client invokes spooler activity, such as when querying for status or submitting a print job. Depending on the application that the client uses to establish the connection to the print server, and then to print, the client may inadvertently hold connections open, for example, when the user does not terminate the application on their workstation.
In this case, the connection might remain open for hours, or even days in extreme cases. In fact, a print server can become constrained either due to the number of clients that are connected actively when printing, or passively when the client holds the connection open.
Administrators generally find that the total number of users connected to a print server shows light activity at beginning of the workday, an increasing server load and peak during midday, and a gradual decrease at the end of the day. Print Server in Windows Server R2 or Windows Server can be configured to render documents to the device-ready page description language PDL format either on the client or on the server. In client-side rendering, the print system on the client translates the document to a printer-specific PDL before it sends the data stream to the print server.
When the queue is configured to use server-side rendering, or the client is not capable of using client-side rendering, the client print system sends the document directly to Print Server. Print Server then renders the document to a printer-specific PDL locally. Depending on the enterprise ecosystem and the mixture of supported clients, the performance of Print Server might vary due to its feature capabilities.
For example, in an environment that uses Windows 7 clients and v4 printer drivers on the printing shared resource, server-side rendering is used. Effectively, every print job that is generated by these clients requires processing on the server.
Therefore, when there are more simultaneous jobs, the workload on the server increases. As another example, if Branch Office Direct Printing is turned on in Windows Server , and there is a heavy mixture of Windows 8 clients, performance is improved.
Windows 8 performs client-side rendering that offloads the processing to the client instead of to the server. Then it routes the job directly to printer, instead of passing it through a centralized print server, which reduces network traffic. The default rendering options that are used by Windows Server R2 and Windows Server are described in the following table.
Because of the various advantages of the v4 printer driver, administrators are encouraged to promote a client mixture that uses Windows 8. In situations where the enterprise has a large number of Windows 7 users, the effect of server-side rendering could require additional benchmarking to ensure acceptable performance.
For client devices that run on ARM processor architecture, we encourage the use of v4 printer drivers to take advantage of the various benefits of the Print and Document Services architecture. For more information, see Print and Document Services Architecture. In Windows 8 and Windows Server , Microsoft introduced a new iteration of the printer driver model, called the v4 printer driver.
This driver model addresses gaps in the previous version and it offers a wide range of advantages. Because the v4 printer driver model has fewer components that cause heavy server processing, there is a lower server load when a v4 printer driver is used with Windows 8. Because Windows 7 clients always use server-side rendering with the v4 printer drivers, more processing occurs on the server. For more information, see V4 Printer Driver.
When server-side rendering is used, the server handles the conversion of the job to device-ready PDL. The amount of processing for each print job is hard to predict because it depends on the content of each print job. For complex jobs, such as documents with extensive graphics, documents in PDF format, or documents with multiple types of fonts, more CPU processing is required, as compared to a simple text document.
If client-side rendering is used, the processing occurs on the client-side, and it does not present additional workload to the server. Given the computing capabilities of devices in the market, we recommend using the client-side rendering configuration when possible. They require fewer resources than a printer that uses a low-end raster-based image editor. High-end printers generally have built-in hard disk drives and memory.
This allows them to process a print job without a protracted spooling process and the associated disk utilization. In contrast, less expensive printers generally have less processing power and internal memory, and they require more processing and disk space on the print server.
The network bandwidth and storage for Print Server can be affected by printing related factors including the number, size, and frequency of print jobs. For example, using Print Server with high-frequency smaller jobs has a different storage requirement than using Print Server with large print jobs.
If Print Server is configured to save print jobs after printing, additional storage is required and this requirement needs to be considered for the deployment. As with any computing environment, more cores on a processor and more memory enables more computing output. Depending on enterprise requirement and the budget that is available, this is an important factor that administrators should consider when making decisions about deployment. With the trend toward server consolidation using virtualization, it is common to see print servers running in a virtualization environment.
Although there is no functional difference between a print server on a virtual machine and a physical print server, there can be a significant difference in the scalability factor based on the hardware requirements and specifications. Performance needs to be evaluated based on the allocated number of cores and memory. On physical print servers, the print job offloads processing to the GPU to expedite completion when it uses a v4 printer driver and supports the XPS rasterization service.
Print Management saves the print administrator a significant amount of time installing printers on client computers and managing and monitoring printers. Tasks that can require up to 10 steps on individual computers now can be accomplished in 2 or 3 steps on multiple computers simultaneously and remotely.
By using Print Management with Group Policy, you can automatically make printer connections available to users and computers in your organization. In addition, Print Management can automatically search for and install network printers on the local subnet of your local print servers.
Here are some important notes about the requirements for Print Management and the print servers that you can monitor using Print Management:. It is not possible to display forms on computers running Windows NT 4. To take full advantage of Print Management, you must be logged on as an administrator or a member of the Administrators group on the print servers you are managing. It is good practice for administrators to use an account with restrictive permissions to perform routine, non-administrative tasks and to use an account with broader permissions only when performing specific administrative tasks.
You can open Print Management and monitor any print server and printer without administrative privileges. However, you will be unable to perform certain functions such as adding and deleting printers and printer drivers. To deploy and operate Print Management, complete the following tasks:. Installing Print Management is accomplished by adding or updating the print server role. Note that the computer on which Print Management is installed does not need to be a print server. Do one of the following:.
To install the print server role. Click Add or remove a role. Follow the steps in the wizard to complete the installation. To update the print server role. Click Update this role. If you want to use Print Management on a computer in another location by using Remote Desktop, the remote computer must have Windows Server and Print Management installed. To open Print Management. You can add both a local print server and network print servers to Print Management. If the server on which you use Print Management is also a print server and you want to manage the printers that it hosts by using Print Management, use the following procedure to add the print server to Print Management.
To add print servers to Print Management. Click Add to List. Add as many print servers as you want, and then click OK.
You can add the local server on which you are working by clicking Add the Local Server. To remove print servers from Print Management. The Custom Printer Filters folder contains the All Printers object, which contains a dynamic view of all of the printers on all of the servers available for managing by Print Management.
All of the custom views, or filters, of printers that you create are stored in Custom Printer Filters. The network printer servers that you add are stored in Print Servers. Every printer server automatically is given four objects that serve as filters for information about a server:. Deployed Printers contains a list of all of the printers located in Print Management that are managed by Group Policy objects.
For more information about managing printers by using Group Policy, see Deploying Printers to Users or Computers by using Group Policy later in this guide. If a server goes offline, the printer server icon will change. You will be able to unable to manage the Drivers, Forms, Ports, and Printers objects until the server comes back online.
The details for each printer display in the results pane of the snap-in console. The results pane contains columns with values such as the printer name, queue status, jobs in the queue, printer location, and driver version. You can add and remove columns to show only certain characteristics of the printers, and you can filter among all the print servers in your organization to display only printers with specific criteria in the columns. Figure 1 shows both a filtered view and the resulting columns.
In any view, you can sort on one criterion by clicking on the heading of one of the columns. Figure 1 A view of printers where "Queue Status" does not equal "Ready". You can also show an extended view, which shows more detail about the queue and provides access to the printer's Web page, if one is available. You can add, remove, and sort columns in extended view.
When you click the Printers object in each printer server or an object in the Custom Printer Filters folder, you can view the columns in the results pane that contain printer details. To add and remove columns. Extended view displays beneath the columns in the right pane, separated by a splitter bar.
Extended view is useful when you want more information about the status of a print job, its owner, the number of pages, the size of the job, when it was submitted, its port, its priority, and so on.
In addition, when the printer has a Web page, extended view displays a Printer Web Page tab. The Web page provides details about the physical properties of the printer and specifications, and sometimes allows remote administration.
For more information, see Using the printer Web page later in this guide. To display or hide columns in extended view, select a printer. On the Jobs tab, right-click the column heading row, and then click the name of the column that you want to display or hide.
You can use the filtering feature to create custom views of printers, for example, it might be helpful to filter for printers with certain error conditions or those printers in a group of buildings regardless of the print server they use. Each view is dynamic, so the data is always up to date. An example of a filter that may be useful is shown in Figure 2. This custom view displays all printers on the specified printer server that have a queue status other than Ready and where there are one or more jobs in the print queue.
Figure 2 Using filter criteria to create a custom view of printers. For every filtered view that you set up, you have the option of setting notifications by e-mail or choosing to run a script.
To learn how to use these options, see Troubleshoot Printers later in this guide. To set up and save a filtered view. This will launch the New Printer Filter Wizard. On the Printer Filter Name and Description wizard page, type a name and optional description for the printer filter.
In Description , type an optional description. To display the number of printers that satisfy the conditions of a filter, select the Display the total number of printers next to the name of the printer filter check box. Click Next. On the Define a printer filter wizard page, do the following:. In terms of print volumes, if you print larger volumes of letter size paper monthly, then you need at least two trays; one for letter and one that will print either legal or ledger and a bottom, letter size tandem tray that can hold up to a couple of thousand letter size paper.
This will ensure you're not running to the machine every five seconds to load more letter paper. Let's face it, we're all tired of cleaning and washing things. However, cleaning your printer is not only important to keep COVID at bay, but also needed to help extend the life of your printer.
Here are a few tips that will come in handy the next time you need to clean your printer. These tips can help make life much easier for you when managing your printer and copier fleet. When it comes to printers, a little can go a long way to saving time and money.
We understand however that managing printers and copiers is not ideal for every organization and for those looking for a World Class, customer-oriented organization to step in with a professional approach, Function4 is ready to help.
In the meantime, stay safe and let us know if we can assist in any way. The Status Page is your window into your printer One of the easiest ways to gain insight into your printers' performance is to review the Status Page Report.
Do you really need additional memory? Is the big, bulky side finisher needed? Understanding Monthly Print Volumes Understanding how much you're printing and letting that dictate the size and speed of your new device is typically the best approach. How many paper trays do you really need? How to clean your printer during normal times or a Global Pandemic Let's face it, we're all tired of cleaning and washing things.
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