high availability and load balancing (english)_load_balancing_e.pdf · thinprint gmbh alt-moabit 91...

ThinPrint GmbHAlt-Moabit 91 a10559 BerlinGermany/Alemania

Cortado, Inc.7600 Grandview AvenueSuite 200Denver, Colorado 80002USA/EEUU

Cortado Pty. Ltd.Level 12, Plaza Building, Australia Square95 Pitt StreetNSW 2000 SydneyAustralia

E-mail: [email protected]: www.thinprint.com

Issued: December 15, 2017 (v250)

High availability and load balancing

ThinPrint version 11

Manual

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.thinprint.com/

Notes

2 Manual

© CopyrightThis document is the intellectual property of ThinPrint GmbH. This document may be copied in whole or in part, provided this Copyright notice is included in every copy.

® Registered trade marks All hardware and software names mentioned in this document are the registered trademarks of their respective companies or should be regarded as such.

Safety warningPlease note the safety warnings in the technical documentation from your hardware vendor and from the manufacturer of each device and component. Before beginning installation, we recommend closing all windows and applications and deactivating any virus scanner.

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Contents

Manual 3

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High availability and load balancing ................................................................. 4

ThinPrint Servers ............................................................................................................ 4

Introducing high availability and load balancing ............................................................ 4Start menu ................................................................................................................ 4ThinPrint configuration ............................................................................................... 5Functionality ............................................................................................................. 7Example ................................................................................................................... 8More menu options .................................................................................................. 10AutoConnect settings ............................................................................................... 11

ThinPrint Clients .......................................................................................................... 12

Introducing high availability and load balancing .......................................................... 12Start menu .............................................................................................................. 12ThinPrint configuration ............................................................................................. 13More menu options .................................................................................................. 16Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 16Deploying the High Availability configuration to other ThinPrint servers .......................... 17


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High availability and load balancingThinPrint ServersIntroducing high availability and load balancing

Critical business processes often still rely on printing. With Windows Server 2012, Microsoft no longer supports print clusters. This leaves printing without a safeguard.

The High Availability Mapping function gives you the opportunity to both establish fail-safe reliability for your ThinPrint Servers, and to evenly distribute the load between them (Illus. 1). To do so, you set up, using AutoConnect on your terminal servers or – with virtual desktops or workstations – using group policies, groups of print servers to be managed. For each group, you need to determine whether it will have high availability (i.e. reliability) or load balancing applied to it.

High availability and load balancing are components of ThinPrint’s Premium licensing.

Illus. 1

Illus. 1 ThinPrint components AutoConnect and ThinPrint HA, which communicate with each other for high availability and load balancing

Note! Since ThinPrint version 11.0, load balancing or failover using the Reg-istry value DPMTries1 isn’t supported anymore.

Start menu

When ThinPrint is installed on a terminal server2, three new Start menu items are added (Illus. 2):

• THINPRINT CONFIGURATION

= ThinPrint configuration in the Microsoft Management Console (MMC), see below

• THINPRINT SELF SERVICE

= printers are selected by the user(s), see the ThinPrint Self Service manual

1 on this, see https://download.cortado.com/docu/ThinPrint/WebHelp/en/10.0/ThinPrint_docu/ThinPrint_Engine_on_print_servers/Load_balancing_and_failover.htm

https://download.cortado.com/docu/ThinPrint/WebHelp/en/10.0/ThinPrint_docu/ThinPrint_Engine_on_print_servers/Load_balancing_and_failover.htm

https://download.cortado.com/docu/ThinPrint/WebHelp/en/10.0/ThinPrint_docu/ThinPrint_Engine_on_print_servers/Load_balancing_and_failover.htm


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• PRINTERS

= classic Printers folder for a better overview (when MMC-based PRINT MAN-AGEMENT is not available)

Illus. 2

Illus. 2 Start menu entries generated by the ThinPrint installer

When Desktop Agent is installed on a workstation or on a virtual desktop3, the new Start menu item THINPRINT SELF SERVICE is added.

ThinPrint configuration

– Open the ThinPrint configuration console – see THINPRINT CONFIGURATION in Illus. 2.

– Select the HIGH AVAILABILITY MAPPING option there (Illus. 3).

Illus. 3

Illus. 3 AutoConnect submenu –High Availability Mapping

– Firstly, you need to determine which print servers are to be managed together. Select CREATE GROUP for this (Illus. 3). That will open the window shown in Illus. 4.

2 alias Remote Desktop Session Host

3 except Virtual Printing component of VMware Horizon Agent



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– Enter a name for the group, and select the type:

• either FAILOVER (for reliability i.e. high availability)

• or LOAD BALANCING (to evenly distribute the printer connections on the servers for this group)

– Then use the button (see arrow) to consecutively add the print servers on which a ThinPrint Engine is installed to the Active Directory. Confirm each win-dow with OK. The result is shown in Illus. 5.

Illus. 4

Illus. 4 adding print servers to a group

Illus. 5

Illus. 5 creation of a Failover type of print server group



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Functionality

With the print server groups, rules no longer need to be defined in the AutoConnect tables for each printer per print server, but only per group. Thus AutoConnect con-nects either – in Failover mode – the printers from the print server with the highest priority or – in Load Balancing mode – connects the printers from the specified print servers alternately.

AutoConnect – installed on terminal servers, virtual desktops or workstations – exchanges information with the ThinPrint servers via Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs). A print server here can have any of the following statuses:

Provided there is an RPC connection, the status of the print server on both machines (terminal server/desktop and print server) is identical (immediate replacement in case of a change). However, if an RPC connection has not been established, the attempt to connect will be repeated regularly. If an RPC connection can't be made oran existing connection is disconnected (and the terminal server or desktop detects this), the print server switches to the status Failed.

A print server’s status is not dependent on the RPC connection alone:

• A print server with the status OK, which then experiences an error while con-necting printers (for example, Error 1722 – if the spooler of the print server is not running) switches firstly to the status Suspicious and, after the maximum number of failed attempts has achieved (Illus. 13), to the status Failed.

• A functioning print server can be manually set to the status Maintenance.

If a print server drops out, it switches over to the status Failed. Then AutoConnect deletes all the printer connections that existed with this print server in all user ses-sions. It then connects the same printers to the print server with the second highest priority (auto-remapping). If the functionality of the failed print server is restored, then it is automatically brought back into operation. Until all the printers are recon-nected to the first print server, both print servers remain active.

Icon Status no. Meaning

0 OK (print server is ready)

1 Suspicious (an error occurred but the print server is still working)

2 Failed (print server fails)

3 Maintenance (print server has been taken out of service)

— server status unknown

— data is being retrieved



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Example

1. The same batch of printers are set up on each of two ThinPrint Servers – cps47 and cps50 (Illus. 6).

Illus. 6

Illus. 6 two printers set up on the primary server cps50

2. On the terminal server or in group policies, both print servers are set as the Failover type in the group “HA”. Both print servers have the status OK (Illus. 7).

Illus. 7

Illus. 7 group “HA” with two print servers with the status OK

3. Furthermore, on the terminal server or in group policies, an entry has been made in the AutoConnect table Map Additional Printers, to connect the printers from this group in the sessions (Illus. 8).

Illus. 8

Illus. 8 both printers from the print server group “HA” set up in Map Additional Print-ers

4. The two printers• Lexmark T650#tphubc25e75:1• HP Color LaserJet CP3505dn#tphubc25e75:2 were connected in the session by the print server with the higher priority – in this case, cps50 (Illus. 9).



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Illus. 9

Illus. 9 two printers connected in a session by cps50

5. The print server with the highest priority drops out – here cps50 (Illus. 10).

Illus. 10

Illus. 10 print server cps50 switched to status Failed

6. As anticipated, the same printers are, shortly after, connected by the second print server – here cps47 (Illus. 11).

Illus. 11

Illus. 11 the same printers are now connected in the session by cps47



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More menu options

See also Illus. 12.

Illus. 12

Illus. 12 right in the illustration: menu for High Availability Mapping

Menu Description

Edit Group change the settings for a print server group, e.g. change the type from Failover to Load Balancing

Duplicate Group create a second group with the same members – e.g. to create addi-tional groups faster or to use the same server simultaneously for reli-ability and for load balancing

Remap Printers • trigger AutoConnect to update the printers in all user sessions• affects also all other terminal servers and desktops which use both

the High Availability Mapping option and printers of the print server in question

Remove Group delete this print server group

Change server status to→ OK restore the server concerned – from the Maintenance mode or from the Suspicious status – to the OK status (= ready mode)

Change server status to→ Maintenance

place the print server concerned into Maintenance mode

Refresh retrieve the current information from one or all print servers of a group



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AutoConnect settings

See also Illus. 13.

Illus. 13

Illus. 13 AutoConnect: High Availability settings

Menu Description

Automatically remap printers If a print server changes status to eitherFailed or Maintenance, the printers that were connected with that print server are deleted automatically and connected with another print server.

Fail detection

Threshold for assigning failed status

Failures when attempting to connect a printer to a print server are counted. After the number of failed attempts specified here, this print server is set to status Failed.

Cancel connection attempt after (s)

If there is no response from a connection attempt after the time defined here, the attempt is aborted and the print server immediately set to status Failed (timeout in seconds).



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For more detail, see the sections AutoConnect configuration using the MMC and Windows registry in the ThinPrint Engine on print servers manual.

ThinPrint ClientsIntroducing high availability and load balancing

With the High Availability Client function you have the opportunity to both establish fail-safe reliability for ThinPrint Clients and to evenly distribute the load between them (Illus. 14). To do so, you set up, using AutoConnect on your terminal servers or – with virtual desktops or workstations – using group policies, groups of computers or devices to be managed. For each group, you need to determine whether high avail-ability (i.e. Failover) or load distributing (i.e. Load balancing) will be applied to it.

High availability and load balancing are set up in the ThinPrint configuration con-sole on those servers from which print jobs are sent to ThinPrint Clients or using group policies. In scenarios with one or more ThinPrint Servers, these are the print servers. In scenarios without ThinPrint Servers, these are the terminal servers or the group policies.

The communication takes place between the ThinPrint components AutoConnect (on ThinPrint servers, terminal servers, or desktops) and ThinPrint Clients (on local print servers or Gateway appliances).

Illus. 14

Illus. 14 High availability/Load balancing: AutoConnect communicates with ThinPrint Clients (orange colored arrows)

Start menu



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When ThinPrint is installed on a terminal server4, three new Start menu items are added (Illus. 15):

• THINPRINT CONFIGURATION

= ThinPrint configuration in the Microsoft Management Console (MMC), see below

• THINPRINT SELF SERVICE

= printers are selected by the user(s), see the ThinPrint Self Service manual

• PRINTERS

= classic Printers folder for a better overview (when MMC-based PRINT MAN-AGEMENT is not available)

Illus. 15

Illus. 15 Start menu entries generated by the ThinPrint installer

ThinPrint configuration

– Open the ThinPrint configuration console – see THINPRINT CONFIGURATION in Illus. 15.

4 alias Remote Desktop Session Host



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– Select the HIGH AVAILABILITY CLIENT option there (Illus. 16).

Illus. 16

Illus. 16 ThinPrint Engine submenu – High Availability Client

– Firstly, you need to determine which ThinPrint Clients are to be managed together. Select either LOAD BALANCING or EDIT for this (Illus. 16). This opens the window shown in Illus. 17.

– Select the HIGH AVAILABILITY MODE for the group (right arrow in Illus. 17):

• either FAILOVER (for reliability i.e. high availability)

• or LOAD BALANCING (to evenly distribute the print jobs to the ThinPrint Clients for this group)

– Then add a new line – for a group (left arrow).

Illus. 17

Illus. 17 ThinPrint Clients added to a group



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If you selected Failover mode (Illus. 18):

– In the ACTIVE CLIENT column, enter the hostname of the computer or device that has the ThinPrint Client to which printing should be primarily directed. This is the name automatically given to the group. In the PASSIVE CLIENTS column, enter the hostnames of the computers or devices with ThinPrint Clients to which printing should be directed (according to the order of the entries) if the Active Client is unavailable. The Client Address in Printer Queue column displays the address to which the print jobs for this group will be sent.

Illus. 18

Illus. 18 creating a Failover type of ThinPrint Client group

If you have selected the Load Balancing mode (Illus. 19):

– In the CLIENTS column, enter the host names of the computers or devices, sep-arated by commas, to which print jobs should be sent on an alternating basis. The first will auto-matically give its name to the group. The CLIENT ADDRESS IN PRINTER QUEUE column displays the address to which the print jobs for this group will be sent.

Illus. 19



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Illus. 19 creating a Load Balancing type of ThinPrint Client group

More menu options

See also Illus. 20.

Illus. 20

Illus. 20 ThinPrint Client group created (example for three client computers, i.e. Gate-way appliances)

Conclusion

The group name – e.g. tphub-a00b00 in Illus. 20 – may then be used as the address of a Thin Print Client when creating printers in Windows printer management. The ThinPrint Engine then recognizes automatically that this is the name of a group.

In Load Balancing mode, it automatically sends the print jobs to each of the Thin-Print Clients alternately and, in Failover mode (only if the primary/active client is unavailable) to the (first of the) secondary/passive ThinPrint Clients. If that is also unavailable, the ThinPrint Engine works through the list of passive clients sequen-tially.

Menu Description

Edit change the settings for a ThinPrint Client group, e.g. change the type from Failover to Load Balancing

Refresh retrieve current information for one or all ThinPrint Clients in a group

Online help open the online help in the browser



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Deploying the High Availability configuration to other ThinPrint serversThe High Availability configuration of ThinPrint Clients is saved to the following Win-dows Registry key:

hkey_local_machine\software\ThinPrint\TPSW32

So, you can just export this key on a ThinPrint server with configured ThinPrint Client High Availability and then re-import it on other ThinPrint servers or use the Active Directory to deploy it.

Caution! Perform a backup of the target machines before importing the Reg-istry key.

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