ITS Printing Services

1
ITS Printing Services

• 25 January, 2006
• Chris Sacksteder, cjs_at_psu.edu
• http//clc.its.psu.edu/About/Presentations/NWOP200
  601

2
Agenda

• Who
• Why
• What was done, needs to be done
• How does existing system work
• When can you sign up
• Questions, Comments, Discussion

3
Who

• ITS Printing Services Working Group
• Committee formed August 2005 to propose a
  chargeback printing service.
• Members
• CLC
• Chris Sacksteder
• John Cripe
• ASET
• Phil Pishioneri
• Mark Campbell
• Greta Armstrong
• Jerry Mihaly
• Robyn Wang

4
Why

• Many units have long wanted to charge for or
  limit student printing(often more for printing
  control rather than cost recovery)
• One campus and a couple departments at UP have
  been supported for a while(kinda unofficial)
• Things change (d) when PSU Gina is (was)
  removed(oops)

5
What . . .

• . . . has been done
• Defined service requirements
• Listed and understood all the components
• Examined possible services
• Researched technical questions
• Developed software
• . . . needs to be done
• Implement prototypes
• Propose exact ITS services
• Finish software development

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Service Requirements

• Definite
• Printing is securea user can't easily tag a
  print job with someone else's userid
• Chargeback is through the bursarstudents only,
  for now
• Accommodates students' "free pages" and
  limitswhen they have not agreed to billed for
  printing via a signature station
• Credits can be requested for spoiled jobs or jobs
  that did not printprocess needs to be efficient

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Service Requirements

• Maybe
• Notification to user's workstation when the print
  job is done
• Web page to query user status(free pages
  remaining, jobs printed, etc.)
• Redundant print servers(automatic failover)
• Queue management
• Remote printing(not a CLC service yet)

8
CLC Printing Components

• The committee decided to use our existing system
  rather than buying or building a new system.
  Components that go into this system include
• Printers and Print Servers
• acquisition buying and replacing the hardware
• network acquiring a network interface
• installation connecting them to a network,
  defining printer and print queues on server
• maintenance buying and refilling paper and
  toner fixing broken printers or servers
  updating OS or firmware

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CLC Printing Components (cont.)

• Printing Methods
• LPR and SMB (domain credentials with the latter)
• authentication (Uniprint exits and PALS)
• authorization (Uniprint exits and PALS)
• queue balancing (Uniprint)
• page counting (Uniprint)
• user notification (Uniprint and UpdtServ on
  Windows, "Uniprint" on Macs)

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CLC Printing Components (cont.)

• Queue Management
• reassign queues to different servers
• dynamic configuration of clients
• User Information
• web page to query status, job, and page count
• web page to show print jobs and credits (under
  consideration)

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CLC Printing Components (cont.)

• Limits and Billing
• signature stations, agree to billing flag
  (Cactus, Pals) (may move this off signature
  stations)
• prepaid pages (manual, PalsDB client)
• free pages, extra free pages (Pals)
• page limits (Pals and Uniprint exits)
• billing (Pals, Cactus, Bursar)
• note the bursar will take a of printing income
  for "new" services
• page credits (web form manual data entry into
  Cactus and Pals planned to be streamlined)
• print charges (rates) have to be approved by the
  controller's office

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Research Questions

• Printing from access.psu.edu or domains with
  trust to dce.psu.edu
• Can users logged into a computer with a
  dce.psu.edu\ltuseridgt account connect to and print
  to printers in the labs.win.psu.edu domain?
• From an OU in access.psu.edu YES
• From a child domain under access.psu.edu YES
• From a third forest with a trust to dce.psu.edu
  YES
• All shadow accounts in win.psu.edu have been set
  with name mappings for dce.psu.edu

13
Software Development

• PALS new verb SDATA for login and logout records
• multiple keys needed for a secure signature
• still lightweight
• done and in production!
• New client code
• PSUWinlogonEvents done
• Macintosh OS 10 Pals in production
• Linux tbd

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Software Development (cont.)

• PALS move user data to SQL server
• IP addresses who is logged in where
• Users jobs, pages, limits
• Add credit data
• Print job data
• Distributed, disconnected model database
  transactions all asynchronous
• Need 100 up time

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Service Scenarios

• Many possibilities a limited set needs to be
  defined, e.g.
• For departments at UP Department buys the first
  printer CLC runs servers and printers, printers
  are treated like lab printers and CLC gets any
  income.
• easiest
• not necessarily appropriate
• Campus CLC runs the Uniprint database, campus
  staff run the printer servers and printers they
  get the money.
• need skilled staff at location
• need to distribute and maintain Uniprint exits

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Service Scenarios (cont.)

• But in all likelihood
• Printing will be controlled with Pals
• We will provide for credit requests
• We will send data to Cactus
• Cactus will send data to the bursar
• Bursar will add charges to the students accounts

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Pharos Uniprint Licensing

• UP site license covers all at UP
• Additional locations
• ITS Computer Store is working on it
• What is it worth to you?

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When?

• Prototype with College of Communications Lab . .
  . now
• Convert Harrisburg this summer (?)
• Test with other locations this summer (?)
• Target Fall Semester 2006 (?)

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Now . . .

• If you are interested in chargeback for color
  printing . . .
• . . . and no rate is set . . .
• HP Color LaserJet (0.15, 0.30)
• Epson 4000 (1.75, 3.50)
• http//clc.its.psu.edu/Printing/Limits/
• Start collecting data now on consumables and
  begin the process for getting a rate established

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Agenda

• Who
• Why
• What was done, needs to be done
• How does existing system work
• When can you sign up
• Questions, Comments, Discussion

21
Questions? Comments?

• Chris Sacksteder, cjs_at_psu.edu
• http//clc.its.psu.edu/About/Presentations/NWOP200
  601
• Lab Use Data Presentation