Reference Guide

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.
Briefly stated, primary/secondary server distribution can be designed based on the following premises:
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One server per subnet/geographical location: high-latency or narrow network bandwidth between the
HP ePrint Enterprise server and a printer will affect performance.
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300 printers per server: even though the overall performance depends on cultural factors (such as
actual average print job type, size and frequency), this number can be used as a general rule of thumb.
Improved performance can be attained by increasing the number of servers; if load is not an issue,
saving on hardware resources can be addressed by increasing the number of printers per server.
Theoretically, one primary server can handle several thousand printers without a problem. It is the
associated odds of having more simultaneous print jobs sent to the same server that should be taken
into account, based on service level details described in the chapter 3.
For a more elaborate analysis, the following aspects should be considered:
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Network bandwidth between geographical locations – If your operation is distributed among sites
that are connected through a slow link, it is recommended that you have one secondary server per
location, closer to the printers. It is suggested that plain content be transferred across different sites,
rather than having rendered/printing traffic go through that channel.
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Distribution is done on a printer basis (i.e., printers are assigned to host servers). It is a good idea to
balance this assignment based on traffic to those printers. For example, if 20% of the printers are
responsible for 80% of the traffic, you should consider distributing the printers instead of concentrating
them on the same primary or secondary server. If there are a total of 1000 printers (200 of them used
80% of the time), you could have approximately 5 HP ePrint Enterprise servers, each one getting 40 of
those 200 more popular devices.
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The number of BES servers typically does not qualify as a good criterion for distributing HP ePrint
Enterprise servers. There is no technical requirement binding BES and HP ePrint Enterprise servers (BES
is just a secure channel enabler). However, the total number of users associated to those BES’ may
indicate a distribution factor.
Section 5.1 Sizing of a primary/secondary layout 17