Example 1: Overall print system health monitoring

Fast River School is a small school with approximately 200 students. They have a single print serverA print server is a system responsible for hosting print queues and sharing printer resources to desktops. Users submit print jobs to a print server rather then directly to the printer itself. A print server can be a dedicated server but on many networks this server also performs other tasks, such as file serving and 5 printers. They would like to monitor the status of PaperCut NG/MF to minimize outages to their printing services. Fast River do not have their own IT support so would like to enlist an IT consultant to set up a basic monitoring system that will track PaperCut NG/MF's health. The IT consultants they have hired have their own monitoring tool that can consume only HTTP response codes.

The IT consultant has recommended setting up the following:

• Requirement 1: Immediate notification when PaperCut NG/MF is not functioning correctly

  The IT consultant wants to receive an immediate email notification when PaperCut NG/MF has an issue preventing it from working. This will allow them to address any outages immediately rather than waiting for someone to report the issue.

  Configure the following in your monitoring tool:

  Setting	Value
  URL	/api/health/status
  Event to trigger alarm state	HTTP response status code = 500
  Event to trigger notification	alarm state = 10 minutes
  Polling interval	60 seconds
  Period during which alarm is triggered	7am – 10pm

  This URL returns an HTTP response status code of 500 when one or more of the following occurs:

  • The Application server cannot connect to the database

  • the number of active database connections is greater than 90%

  • less than 1 GB available disk space

  • an invalid license is in use

  • Site ServerSite Servers take over the role of a Primary Application Server in the event of network outages. Key roles taken over include authentication, copy and print tracking and Find-Me printing. Site Servers ensure continuous availability of printing resources to support key business functions over unreliable network links or during unplanned network disruptions. is offline

  The monitoring tool would trigger an email alert and display a visual representation of the alarm on the dashboard. An example below shows this endpointAn endpoint is a connection point where HTML files or active server pages are exposed and can be accessed by an external application. Endpoints provide information that can be consumed by an external monitoring tool. in error.

  

  NOTE

  For more information about how to configure this example using some of the common monitoring tools, see How to monitor PaperCut System Health.