HP ePrint Enterprise Architectural Overview Release 4.
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Table of contents 1 Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 1 1.1 Solution at a glance ......................................................................................................................................... 1 2 Printing to HP ePrint Enterprise ...................................................................................................................... 2 2.
5 Scalability .................................................................................................................................................. 16 5.1 Sizing of a primary/secondary layout ...........................................................................................................
1 Introduction The emergence of mobile devices and cloud services has revolutionized business productivity and innovation. However, even the best-equipped mobile employees find themselves hunting down places to print (and get printing assistance) while on the go. HP ePrint Enterprise is a server-based mobile printing solution that makes it easy for employees to print from mobile devices to any registered printer on enterprise network, while keeping data safely within the company network.
2 Printing to HP ePrint Enterprise The versatility of HP ePrint Enterprise allows IT department to choose several ways to enable cloud-based mobile printing. Depending on the organization’s needs, IT department can implement app-based printing, email-based printing, or both. With HP ePrint Enterprise, truly mobile printing is now a reality. 2.1 Using email clients Every printer added to the server via HP ePrint Enterprise admin console will have a unique email address assigned for it.
Additionally, corporate email server must be able to address the HP ePrint Enterprise SMTP if content is transferred through email. Following figure represents a high-level overview of mobile apps print workflow: Scenario 1 — HTTP/S is the only communication protocol for all three operations. Though this seems like an easier setup, there is a drawback: printing any email content requires downloading and uploading the content back to the corporate network. If a regular mobile data connection (e.g.
The following figure represents a high-level overview of enterprise connectivity over Local Wi-Fi: 4 Chapter 2 Printing to HP ePrint Enterprise
Print workflow from Android, iOS, and BB10 device The HP ePrint Enterprise application will need to be installed on your mobile device. It can be obtained from your carrier’s mobile app store. Once installed, an HP ePrint Enterprise icon should become available. This application gives users access to printable content and, subsequently, to printer searching and job submission. To enable the application to search and print to an HP Enterprise server, it needs to be registered and authorized by the server.
6. A dispatcher mechanism creates virtual queues for each file belonging to this group, allowing serialization of jobs per printer, so the Windows spooler doesn’t potentially address the same printer more than once at a time. For each printer, each file will queue, then un-queue and render (from plain content to PCL/PS), and send for printing through the Windows spooler. If a job stays queued for too long, it will be re-queued according to a retry policy (configurable).
From an HP ePrint Enterprise deployment standpoint, very little needs to be done on the BES. In practical terms, BES is not part of the solution, but only an enabler to the secure communication over HTTP/S and email. For more details on BlackBerry and BES setup, refer to the HP ePrint Enterprise Client Installation Guide. Print job from a Blackberry Using a BES administration task, plug-in applications can be pushed to BlackBerry devices, enabling a Print button transparently.
conditions or connection problems), the job is cancelled. Either way, the system is notified of the status, and the user receives a consolidated message after a few seconds. 9. When the original stored file reaches a final state (printed or failed to print), the file is considered “old”. Old files are deleted by an automatic cleanup mechanism, which can be scheduled by the system administrator. 2.2.2.2 Good for Enterprise HP ePrint Enterprise for Good mobile app must be installed on the device.
2.3 Using print system in mobile devices 2.3.1 iOS HP ePrint Enterprise Bridge for Wi-Fi Printing gives access to instant mobile printing experience without the need to download or install additional mobile apps. HP ePrint Enterprise Bridge provides the necessary channel for printing through HP ePrint Enterprise. The following figure represents a high-level overview of HP ePrint Enterprise Bridge for Wi-Fi Printing workflow: Section 2.
3 Security Secure mobile printing includes the following aspects: ● Cryptography: art of protecting information by transforming it into an unreadable format ● Server security: securing business logic at the back-end, which provides services to mobile devices ● Communication security: aims at providing confidentiality of information transmitted over insecure channels such as wireless links ● Content security: mitigates the risk of loss of confidential documents on the server ● Printing security: pr
3.3 Communication security This is the third aspect of secure mobile printing. HP ePrint Enterprise can accept print jobs using the HTTPS protocol or the SMTP protocol. When using the SMTP protocol, HP ePrint Enterprise server, by default, uses TLS to interact with the enterprise email server. HP encourages its customers to configure their mobile email-clients also to use TLS for interacting with their enterprise email server. 3.
4 Service Infrastructure This chapter describes the service level of HP ePrint Enterprise, assisting IT professionals with dimension deployments. It also describes how the system behaves in situations of peak and stress, which helps understand the limitations of the system. 4.1 Assumptions All performance and load analysis stated in this chapter are based on a set of assumptions which attempt to describe a real use scenario.
4.2 Load and processing The following graphic compares the number of jobs being created in the print spooler (actual print jobs, blue line) per minute, and how that relates to the number of messages being queued (beige line) during a 1 hour period. For high-capacity analysis, refer to the Peak analysis section of this guide. The number of queued messages indicates HP ePrint Enterprise capacity to process APJ’s when they arrive for rendering.
4.4 Peak analysis Two analyses were run to verify the capacity of HP ePrint Enterprise to handle usage peaks (i.e. an increase of load during a short period of time): one with a constant base load to a single printer, and a second one starting with no load to several printers. 4.4.1 With base load This scenario was analyzed based on the assumption that a typical system usage may have a given load considered as “base”, on top of which a peak load is imposed.
mechanism behaves to that (pink line), slowing down the reaction time as the load increases. After the 8th minute, the peak is ended, and the load is back to approximately 4 APJs/min. The pink curve represents the number of messages being queued (which indicates control messages needed to process the job), and how quickly HP ePrint Enterprise can consume them and get jobs printed.
5 Scalability HP ePrint Enterprise can be deployed in a primary/secondary server layout to balance the load for larger printer fleets. In this layout, a single primary server will be responsible for the database operations (searching, user authentication, activity logging, etc.) and routing print job requests to other secondary servers. Secondary servers will then be responsible for rendering and printing only.
5.1 Sizing of a primary/secondary layout Each installation of HP ePrint Enterprise must have at least one primary server to control all database operation. Serviceability, however, depends on capacity to render and send print jobs to printers. To maintain or improve serviceability in high-load scenarios, rendering and printing can be balanced through secondary servers, according to printer fleet distribution, taking both network and load/traffic aspects into account.
