Minimum / Recommended hardware requirements

Hardware requirements are always highly dependent on customer environment. The number of devices, remote sites, users, print job sizes, output volumes, usage frequency. If you are not certain about the customer environment, please consult with Y Soft representative the appropriate hardware sizing for your customer.

There are several considerations in every deployment:

1. Windows print queue – the input/output print queue inside operating system. The print queue is a mechanism that provides print driver to a client software (e.g. to create a PCL/PS file, receive data stream over a network, store it on the hard drive and serialize it to the printer).

2. YSoft SafeQ print queue – print queue inside YSoft SafeQ which can be connected to a specific printer, terminal (reader) or group of users. From the perspective of Windows print queue, this represents (LPR) queue name in the print queue backend. YSoft SafeQ server has an internal mechanism to balance the load by partially serializing the incoming traffic; in theory there is no limit on how many Windows print queues can be connected to the YSoft SafeQ server.

3. Network Device – physical printing device (single or multifunction printer) with terminal and card reader. YSoft SafeQ server sends print jobs to the device. One network device typically represents one or multiple Windows print queues.

4. YSoft SafeQ CML Server – main YSoft SafeQ server on a physical or virtual server. CML server uses SQL database to retain print job data, LPR subsystem that receives prints from print server or client workstations, web administration interface, system for managing requests from terminals and readers and LDAP integration subsystem.
   A single CML server can handle up to 200 network devices.
   A 4-node CML cluster can handle up to 1600 network devices (note that reasonable hardware or virtual platform is required).

5. YSoft SafeQ ORS Server – spooler server on a physical or virtual server. Multiple ORSes can build a roaming group which is able to handle up to 2000 devices in a 25-node system.
   Each YSoft SafeQ ORS server can handle up to 200 network devices.

See hardware requirements for Windows Servers at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/bb414778

See best practices for sizing Windows Print Servers at http://blogs.technet.com/b/yongrhee/archive/2009/09/14/best-practices-on-deploying-a-microsoft-windows-server-2008-windows-server-2008-r2-print-server.aspx

See Network communication overview for more details on YSoft SafeQ communication.

See How to measure storage throughput and IOPS for more details how to evaluate disk performance. Please note, that the required disk performance might differ from customer to customer and it is dependent on YSoft SafeQ configuration (e.g. usage of parser, cacheReplicationBufferPersistent setting, spooler location, ...) and on the way, how customers use the YSoft SafeQ (e.g. if they generate constant load or peaks).