Available in PaperCut NG and PaperCut MF.

Monitor print system health

Printing is an essential service in your business that is often overlooked until it is not working. You might find that much of your time is taken up firefighting urgent issues, such as:

  • in a business all printers in a branch going offline, or

  • in a school, the Administration Department printer is not working when exams need to be printed.

Imagine if you could not only receive real-time alerts as soon as any part of your print environment is not working, but also be able to anticipate potential issues and avoid the outages all together.

Best practices in print system health monitoring recommend the following:

  • an application should not monitor itself

  • use inexpensive endpoints to reduce load on the application server

  • use your existing monitoring tool to monitor all of your applications

  • be proactive to avoid print system down time rather than reactive when you receive a support call.

You might already be monitoring the status of your printers and servers (for example, using SNMPSimple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is a component of the Internet Protocol Suite as defined by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It consists of a set of standards for network management, including an application layer protocol, a database schema, and a set of data objects. Devices that typically support SNMP include routers, switches, servers, workstations, printers, modem racks and more.), which can help a lot, but often does not tell the whole story. It’s not just about monitoring individual components, but also the overall system usage. The key benefits of using the PaperCut NG/MF System Health interface are:

  • you can monitor the end-to-end health of your entire print environment, not just your printers

  • it is easier than SNMP to set up in a multi-device type environment

  • more detailed information than whether a printer or device is offline, for example, it provides real-time insights into printing behavior.

We have worked with Universities around the globe, and have come up with the essential aspects we believe you should monitor. These key factors have been wrapped up into a single overall status measure that you can set up in minutes in your existing monitoring tool, regardless of your skill level. Alternatively, the System Health interface also provides a wide range of endpoints for more detailed analysis. You can choose what you want to monitor.

NOTE

When selecting an 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. to monitor, you should always monitor the narrowest endpoint possible, as using broader endpoints can increase load on the Application ServerAn Application Server is the primary server program responsible for providing the PaperCut user interface, storing data, and providing services to users. PaperCut uses the Application Server to manage user and account information, manage printers, calculate print costs, provide a web browser interface to administrators and end users, and much more. and slow down operations.

Next steps

For more information about monitoring PaperCut NG/MF's system health, see: