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© Copyright 366 Software Inc. 2006 -All rights reserved 1 Managing Desktop Printers Desktop Printers: What are they? Many corporations have printers that are directly connected to personal computers. A desktop printer is any printer that is locally defined for individual use. This may be may be parallel-attached, serial-attached, USB-attached, or a network printer, although the non-network printers are of most interest here. This paper discusses how PrinterRx monitors the printing activity going to these types of printers. Best practices for managing Enterprise Printing does not recommend printing using direct-attached printers. Without going into detail, the logic for not using direct-attached printers includes: (1) desktop printers usually have the highest per page printing cost (TCO), (2) complex supplies management, (3) greater supplies inventory costs, (4) increased software management complexity, (5) added complexity for asset management, and (6) regulatory & compliance issues. Unfortunately, there is a proliferation of direct-attached printers, resulting in a challenge to organizations to wean employees off their desktop printers. The following are definitions used by PrinterRx: · A Parallel-attached Printer is a printer or device that is directly connected to a desktop computer by an IEEE parallel cable. · A USB-attached Printer is a printer or device that is directly connected to a desktop computer by an IEEE USB cable. · A Serial-attached Printer is a printer or device that is directly connected to a desktop computer by an IEEE serial cable. · A Desktop Printer is a printer or device that is locally defined for individual use. However, a desktop printer may be shared out to other users. A desktop printer may be a parallel-attached, serial-attached, USB-attached, or network printer. pDesktop Overview pDesktop is a small agent that resides on the local PC and monitors printing activity in two ways. The first way is by monitoring print queue counts via the performance registry. This provides aggregate counts of the number of print jobs going through the local print queues. The second way is by monitoring activity through local print queues. In this way, all jobs sent to print queues are tracked. The PrinterRx database does not retain the actual job, just the job name and attributes. This agent sends printing activity information for these desktop printers to the PrinterRx software on the server according to a specified schedule. PrinterRx Installation Specifications PrinterRx Software needs to be installed prior to the pDesktop agent. For PrinterRx software install, we recommend installation on a server-class Microsoft Windows © Copyright 366 Software Inc. 2006 -All rights reserved 2 machine, version Windows 2k or higher. We do not recommend PrinterRx to be installed on a print server. This machine must have at least 1GB ram, 5GB free HD space, and may not be in use as a web server for anything else. Some ports that need to be accessible to PrinterRx include: 80, 161, 162, 515, 2722, 9100. A PrinterRx install includes installation of an embedded Oracle license for storing data. During the installation process, when the PrinterRx software is loaded, an IP address range is set for detection of network-attached devices (printers and Multifunction Devices). This polling of the network may take some time in the range or ranges depending on the size of the scope the more refined the IP range, the faster the discovery process. This will give the software information on the devices (printer type, status, counters, b/w vs. color, error information, etc). pDesktop Installation 366 Software provides two variations of the desktop software: (1) a system service installed via a windows install (pDesktop), or (2) a windows application installed via a windows install or script (wDesktop). In both options, the software needs to be installed on each desktop that you wish to monitor. pDesktop is installed on the desktop computer as a service and must be installed and run with Administrator privileges. wDesktop is the windows-based application which can be installed or run with either Administrator or User privileges, although Administrator privileges are preferred. The installation can be performed individually on each desktop or automated for a large number of PCs. The automated installation procedure uses software distribution packages or a shared-disk install (wDesktop only). Automated Install using SMS: SMS Software Distribution (or other software distribution package) tells its agents on network PCs to execute the appropriate script. The PC’s SMS agent runs as ‘SYSTEM’ and has the appropriate privileges to install software on the remote PC. SMS will then track what is installed, track the location of devices and can also upgrade or remove remotely installed software. SMS is provided by Microsoft but there are other providers of this type of software (BMC, CA, etc.). They all use the same basic techniques with the main difference being that some will combine a download feature rather than using a shared disk. Automated Install using shared disk: Small DOS scripts are provided to install or remove wDesktop agent software. These scripts can be placed on a network share for easy distribution to the PCs. The windows-based application, wDesktop, can be installed in user privilege mode via a shared disk install. An automatic install or removal of the software can be initialized from a centralized login or link to a centralized script as the user is logging in. This provides an automated install option for corporations who do not have software distribution packages and procedures. Manual Install: Without an automated install system, the agent (pDesktop or wDesktop with administration privileges) has to be installed on each PC. The individual doing the installation will need to log on with a system account and then run a downloaded executable or CD to install or remove the software. © Copyright 366 Software Inc. 2006 -All rights reserved 3 Information Gathered by pDesktop For print jobs, the desktop agent pulls the printer name, server name, machine name, username, pages, copies, media, duplex, color, orientation, default source, etc. For the performance data, the desktop agent pulls desktop IP address, desktop mac address, printer name, server name, description, port name, port type, manufacturer, model, jobs and pages. PrinterRx will not be able to send out alerts for desktop issues, such as low toner, since the desktop printer information available to PrinterRx is limited. Information is collected from the desktop operating system (XP, Windows 2000, etc.). This information comes from the print queue handler. Given that PrinterRx has no direct contact with the printer, it has to rely on Microsoft Windows to get the printer status. Windows may be able to get a status, but more often is unable to. Windows receives the status only when jobs start to print, but does not actually monitor the printers. The Desktop Printers reports of PrinterRx compile important printing information for your desktop printing. The software tracks the number of jobs, total pages printed, the overhead costs, printing costs, and provides the printing costs associated with a given desktop printer. These costs do not include any downtime costs. In User Printing Reports, PrinterRx tracks printing on a user basis. This provides information detailing where users are printing, the number of jobs, and number of pages they are printing on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis, and tracks the total cost associated with that user’s printing activities. Figure 1: Desktop Printer Information Figure 2: User Printing Information © Copyright 366 Software Inc. 2006 -All rights reserved 4 You can also drill down to view the actual jobs the user sent to the printer and submit time. PrinterRx has the ability to turn off tracking of job names for privacy concerns. PrinterRx Impact on Bandwidth In installing new software a logical concern is, “How does this impact the network’s bandwidth?” The truth is PrinterRx will have very little impact on network bandwidth. For polling and discovery, PrinterRx uses less than 2 MB per 100 printers and discovery takes no bandwidth when searching for printers. The only network traffic during the discovery process occurs when actual printers are discovered. The SNMP probe and collecting data utilizes only a few packets, and the interval for polling devices and ‘timeout’ settings can be customized. PrinterRx is a monitoring application. The small packets of data being passed create no degradation on the network that would affect bandwidth. PrinterRx does not require software or drivers to manage print queues nor interferes with queue or job management on existing print servers. To date, we have had no complaints about the amount of network traffic PrinterRx is using. For very large sites, the network traffic used can be adjusted by setting how often the printer discovery and printer polling agents run. In addition, PrinterRx agents can be deployed over multiple servers on different subnets to further disperse the network traffic. This would only be recommended for large enterprises which contain more than 2000 devices. Figure 3: User Job information © Copyright 366 Software Inc. 2006 -All rights reserved 5 pDesktop Impact on Bandwith The pDesktop agent resides on the desktop computer and only reports back to the PrinterRx database at the user specified intervals. As explained above, PrinterRx uses less than 2MB per 100 printers to complete these functions. Figure 4 shows how the run schedule for pDesktop can be customized Why is tracking this information essential? By implementing PrinterRx, your organization will obtain a thorough knowledge of printing assets, supplies, maintenance, and printing costs. This information is crucial for a number of reasons. Not only does this knowledge give you the power to reduce your organization’s printing costs, it also provides answers for regulatory purposes as demanded by your auditors. Without knowing what assets you have, it becomes impossible to comply with regulation requirements set forth by governing bodies, such as HIPAA and SOX. PrinterRx provides the audit trail and information you need. pDesktop agent by PrinterRx also tracks jobs that have been printed. Although this is a regulation requirement, PrinterRx also has the option to turn off tracking of job names for privacy concerns when you don’t wish or require regulatory tracking. Figure 4: Customizing pDesktop schedule