Printer Pools

Printer Pools

Enable load balancing on multiple print devices of the same type

Problem/Question

“Is it possible to distribute the print jobs evenly to several printers?"
You have several printers of the same type and want to realize a kind of "load balancing".
That means you want to ensure that your printers are being used optimally with minimal downtime and minimal operator interaction.

Solution/Work-Around

There is the possibility of setting up so-called printer pools in Ergosoft. Printer Pools are a powerful tool to automatically distribute print Job across multiple print devices of the same type.
You can configure a Printer Pool and assign all printers of the same type to it. Now whenever you send a job to that Printer Pool, the RIP will automatically check which printers are currently idle and send the job to that one.
Basically, the printer pool is a virtual queue in which the print queues of all printers involved are summarized. Accordingly, the procedure for creating a printer pool is similar to that for creating an ordinary PrintQueue.

So proceed as follows:
  1. Go to the "Queues" tab in the ControlCenter
  2. Select "Manage Queues" 
  3. This time you choose "Printer Pool" as client
  4. Click on the green plus to create a new one
  5. The dialog window "Edit Printer Pool" is opened
  6. Open the drop down menu at "Printer Pool Members" besides the <Add> button
  7. Now select the first device for the printer pool from your device fleet and confirm with <Add>
  8. The selected printer now appears in the list above
  9. If you now open the dropdown menu again to add the next printer, only suitable printers of the same type appear
  10. In this way, add all the desired printers to the members list one after the other
  11. Next, set up a Spool Folder for your Printer Pool in the "Folder for Spool Files" section by clicking the <Browse> button and selecting a folder from there
    (This Spool folder is specific to the Printer Pool and separate from the spool folders already set up for your individual PrintQueues)
  12. Finally you may enter a description for your printer pool to easily identify it later
  13. Confirm with <OK> when you're ready
Note: The procedure described assumes that you have already created an individual PrintQueue for all of your printers.

It continues now in the "Print Environment Manager":
  1. Create a copy of an existing printing environment for a printer that is now in the printer pool.
  2. Select <Settings> for this printing environment
  3. At "Output Device" activate "Printer Pool" to select the one you want
  4. Confirm with <OK>
Important to know! The following requirements will help you to achieve color results that are as comparable as possible on all devices in a printer pool:
  1. All devices are technically up to date
  2. You use the same ink and media
  3. With the Color Equalizer you can coordinate the color rendering of the devices even better
  4. All jobs are listed in the PrintQueue of each pool member (you can see on which printer the job was printed in the journal)
  5. To force a certain printer of the pool members to print, all the other members have to be offline


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