Printing reliability in an IBM host environment
By Peter Friberg, Product Manager at Axis Communications
Many organizations have made tremendous investments in mission critical business networks such as IBM Mainframe and IBM AS/400; installations which can be seen as the heart of the organization. These systems are processing vital information necessary to run the day-to-day business, and they are finely tuned to work reliably with tough demands on security, up-time, control and availability.
The host systems are often expensive to maintain and there is a resistance to change a working, running system; one change leads to another and another. Each change is expensive and risky.
Printing is also an integral part of the business processes. You need to produce heavy-duty, high-volume printing outputs to support the mission-critical applications while maintaining speed, accuracy and high productivity at the same time.
Users and customers have requirements and expectations from the printing environment, such as creating dynamic report designs that incorporate vibrant colors, fonts and graphics, and which can be distributed to other printers and devices in the network. Faced with this your IBM system cannot remain stagnant.
With the growth of Internet and TCP/IP based intranets, many companies have built a parallel network to use the flexible, open, communication services provided by this technique, with accumulated responsibilities and problems for the sys admin.
Reliability considerations
In general the printing requirements boil down to availability and reliability in the output flows:being able to deliver IBM applications print data over networks to local and remote printers, the same way as usual, all the time. The demands on capabilities such as performance, speed, efficiency and control naturally vary depending on the nature of the print data. A company with an occasional need to print out email hard copies cannot be compared with a bank or insurance company printing large volumes of consistent, high-quality statements, invoices, bills and policies.
Understanding that your business is dependent upon on-time communications via print output, your printing solutions should contribute to the efficiency of your day-to-day operations.
If you're in the business of production printing and you must provide high-quality, on-time output consistently, you demand a highly efficient, continuous printing solution that you can rely on. You also want to protect your investment, respond to changing business requirements and at the same time leverage the benefits of new technologies in the printing field.
A number of different technologies with support for IBM's industry-standard have surfaced through the years fulfilling the demands above to different levels.
Disadvantages to look out for
Some solutions lack print job acknowledgment. Once the print data is transmitted to the LPD, the host will consider the job done. This fact does not necessarily mean that the job is actually printed. Error management is also a vital part of the printing reliability, especially in environment where the printing solution is managed remotely. Many printing solutions do not report back when a printing failure has occurred, and why.
As in office environments in general, the need for reliable printouts from IBM systems is increasing. In the host environment, users are often forced to stay with single purpose printing solutions, expensive and without flexibility. What they really want is to mix and match the best-of-breed solutions, just like anyone else. Some implementations will not allow the user to select page ranges or multiple copies of a document to be printed. While minimizing user intervention is a priority, you still want the user to be able to choose some aspects that has to do with the actual printing output.
Software solutions reside with all the other applications in the server. Usually, the printing application is designed solely for the specific printer, or family of printers. Administration is done through specialized interfaces or through third party administration tools which further add to the complexity and costs. Software solutions are, when they are fine-tuned and running, reliable printing solutions. But software that runs on the host can make the host go down.
A dedicated printer is specialized for the IBM system outputs. It is tested and tried in this specific environment and is a true workhorse when successfully installed. The problems start when it is time to replace it. The printer manufacturers discontinue printer models as new ones are developed and put on the market. New installations, adaptations and configurations.
Another major drawback is that some methods are proprietary. The specifications are not publicly available leaving the door open for incompatible implementations.
In a world where everything is changing over time, such as requirements of what systems to use and what the organization needs to support in the day-to-day work, the ideal would be to have printing sub-systems that can work independently and be updated in isolated change projects. Easy to install, easy to maintain, and keep the load off the server.
Is there such a solution?
An investment that lasts
Yes, a print server as the middle layer between the network and the actual printers does the job.
A print server connects a printer to a network and allows users and systems to share the printer. Print servers are robust stand-alone hardware units, usually based on a special purpose processor and ASICs – application specific integrated circuits. This solution makes it possible to handle the printing completely separate from the servers. Changes can be made, printers replaced, print resources can be optimized and reconfigurations done – without the server being involved.
Investing in an external print server reduces cost for implementation and administration, while increasing reliability and security. The print server solution is a long-term investment that usually outlasts several generations of printers. With a print server it is possible to take full advantage of printer development without changing the interface towards the printers since it is possible to re-use the same print server for tomorrow’s printers and fully utilize the printing capacity in the network.
The print server has a higher expected uptime than most other components in the IT environment. But if it goes down for some reason, it only affects the printer directly connected to that particular print server (not all printers). The print server cannot make the host go down since it is a separate server. A print server connects directly to the LAN and to the printers, and does not interfere with the running system.
Using print servers is a much more efficient way of handling the output compared to software based solutions. Quite often, print server solutions are implemented in the wake of an internal software-based printing solution which has failed.
Axis IBM-to-LAN print servers
The host-to-LAN printers from Axis are developed according to the concept of distributed data conversion that delivers great scalability and helps freeing host system resources for more critical tasks, thus utilizing the IBM system more effectively and improving overall system throughput. The flexibility to choose between multiple print methods makes this an attractive choice for the printing solution.
The AXIS print servers have a built-in installation wizard that is easy to use, and also an embedded web server so that the print server can be configured separately which means that the host system does not need to be modified when changes occur. Therefore there is no need for long-term projects or costly consultants.
You will get the same functionality as from a traditional IBM printer connected over coax or twinax, including features such as error recovery, exception notification, job control and end-of-job notification.
The Axis print servers assure a tight and controlled flow of status and data in a direct path between the IBM host system and the printer.