ThinPrint Hub Tutorial: Unbelievably Easy Branch Office Printing
In this quick tutorial we demonstrate how to configure printing from a cloud-hosted print server (e.g. hosted in AWS), down to a remote branch office hiding behind a masked network.
Deploying printing infrastructure in a remote branch office physically separated from headquarters often poses a number of challenges.
Often, there is no printing expertise in the branch office itself. Depending on the distances involved, resolving problems can therefore be time consuming and less than ideal.
On top of this, print jobs can contain highly sensitive data, therefore adequate security measures need to be implemented. Costs resulting from provisioning local server hardware and encrypted connections (VPNs) can add up quickly.
Some administrators try to work around this issue by simply deploying session-based printing, e.g. printing from an RDSH over the RDP channel, or from a Citrix XenApp Server over the ICA channel. This poses some extra challenges in large environments:
- As users are sharing their session with application data and print data, session performance and stability can be impacted, even coming to a complete stand-still when connecting from sites with a small bandwidth link.
- The administrator needs to be vigilant in keeping print drivers up to date on every users’ workstation. Driver issues are often the biggest cause for print-related phone calls to the IT Desk, and the workload is intensified when you have the same printer driver on dozens of users’ workstations.
Whatever the scenario, the time-tested solution to eliminate these problems and lower the administrative burden is to use a centrally-managed print server hosting a single copy of all the printer drivers and a ThinPrint Engine, along with the ThinPrint Hub at branch offices.
Tutorial: Configuring Branch Office Printing with the ThinPrint Hub
Just take a look in this video. Even in situations where the branch offices are not in the same network as the print server, ThinPrint is able transmit print data outside of the users’ session securely over the World Wide Web. This is achievable using a ThinPrint Hub and a central print server with ThinPrint Engine and Connection Service installed. We demonstrate how easy it is to set up and how quick and seamless the printing experience will be for your remote users!
