Overview on Multi-Server and Multi-Site Deployments

The PaperCut NG / MF solution was designed with distribution in mind. The answer is built using the service-oriented architecture, which allows its components to be installed on different machines with different operating systems. This allows PaperCut NG / MF to be installed in a variety of configurations, adapting to your network design, since no two sites are the same. 

The simplest and most common installation is to install PaperCut NG / MF on a website's print server (where the site only has one). For a small school or organization, the implementation need not be more complicated than that. It is a single application Network Server Deployment, a single print server implementation, and suitable for most deployments.

A few more complex implementation examples exist below, to show what is possible. You can extend or merge some of these concepts to suit your network and create the ideal PaperCut NG / MF implementation.

PaperCut NG / MF operates one layer above network printing services. For this reason, design your solution to provide your printing services first, and then integrate the PaperCut NG / MF application into your network. That is, if you want a site-specific print server to stop large jobs that cross-network links, do so. You can also use clustering to provide a high delay for printing services.

PaperCut site server

The PaperCut site server can complete all solution projects in the next section.

The PaperCut website Server Deployment offers the customer the risk of downpours that access to print resources will not be interrupted by unexpected network interruptions. The PaperCut site server implementation ensures that the essential services of the central PaperCut server are supported locally in the event of a disaster. Site servers are easy to install and hide the complexity of database replication to administrators.

Although initially designed for use in multi-site solutions, it is not the only use of the site server. Think of the site server as a proxy for the application server, which can also perform a set of application server tasks with the last known data set during an interruption.

Examples of implementation

Scenario A: single site, multiple print servers

It is quite common for websites to have multiple print servers, even if they are clients in one physical location.

IOS Printing: Implement supported printing from iOS devices using a Mac server to complement a Windows print server.

Administrator/curriculum: Several schools separate printing in the School Administration section from a page by general staff/students.

Bundling: Each node of a clustered resource is installed as a print server.

Each of the print servers in this scenario must be installed and configured to communicate with the application server. For more information, see Configuring secondary print servers and locally connected printers.

PaperCut Site Server can add benefits to this deployment scenario if the application server is deployed in the private cloud. The site server would provide a local level of redundancy in the event of a connection failure to cloud resources. One of the print servers could play this role, in addition to hosting the print provider PaperCut.

Scenario B: multiple sites, a single server

Not all multi-site installations depend on a print server at each location. This may be since the sites are small and do not guarantee resources or because they are large enough and have resources centralized in a data center or the private cloud.

In both cases, if all printing is centralized through a single application server and a single print server installation, the installation will be the same as if it were a unique website with a single server...

The PaperCut site server could add benefits to this implementation if each site wanted to guarantee support for the primary commercial services that use the MFD and the printed version during a network interruption between a website and the application server.