Papercut MF move to cloud printing?

[jblackburnHWGA]

At the moment we have a standard papercut environment. Papercut on the print server. Papercut pulling ad users and groups. then printing through a follow me print queue to MFDs that release prints based on users credentials. We then bill etc based on the groups. We also utilise the web print stuff that uses a windows 10 VM to translate and print upload documents. A fairly standard setup

 

Do any of you have any advice on the best approach to move to cloud for printing? Papercut don't really have one. I want the same function or close to the same function as Papercut but i want it to work from the cloud and authenticate using azure user accounts rather than AD.

Is that achievable or like with Intune do i need to forget what i had and work with what i can get and then make that work?

[supportman]

I've also been looking at this as it would be good to get rid of the local server at some point, but am in as much the dark as you so far.

 

Not seen anyone actually doing it yet.

[jblackburnHWGA]

i've been having a look at printix which looks quite good I just don't know how it works with our printers.

I've been talking to our lease company who have said Papercut will work ok without an local AD you can just manually import users. Solves me short term problems but doesn't give me a long term solution. The print company don't have much to offer in terms of cloud either just just offered to host the papercut box for us at a cost

[rogerdnixon]

We run Papercut at our primaries and sync users directly for Google Workspace - no local AD - just a light weight onsite print server. You can also sync Azure AD to Papercut if you want. We use Mobility Print and Print Deploy depending on the clients.

 

Its entirely possible to host Papercut on your favorite cloud hosting provider either as a Windows or Linux VM. However, for now we find the cost of doing that greater than have a low powered bit of tin onsite.

 

I've used Printix at one site and switched back to Papercut after one year as it was a bit inflexible compared to Papercut.

[DGardiner]

We run Papercut at our primaries and sync users directly for Google Workspace - no local AD - just a light weight onsite print server. You can also sync Azure AD to Papercut if you want. We use Mobility Print and Print Deploy depending on the clients.

 

Its entirely possible to host Papercut on your favorite cloud hosting provider either as a Windows or Linux VM. However, for now we find the cost of doing that greater than have a low powered bit of tin onsite.

 

I've used Printix at one site and switched back to Papercut after one year as it was a bit inflexible compared to Papercut.

 

Have you tried papercut on linux? the Print provider s**T a brick when he turned up and we asked them to install it on linux rather than windows... ended up back on a windows box. Though i would like to fix that at some point

[rogerdnixon]

Yep - run it on Linux - Ubuntu Server - but normally Windows. However, the odd occasion, I've done Linux, it dows run quite a bit faster than it does on Windows - web interface is really snappy even on low end hardware. However, it is somewhat more involved to setup.

[DGardiner]

Yep - run it on Linux - Ubuntu Server - but normally Windows. However, the odd occasion, I've done Linux, it dows run quite a bit faster than it does on Windows - web interface is really snappy even on low end hardware. However, it is somewhat more involved to setup.

 

Ill have to get that arranged at some point - Was waiting for a renewal to come around to see what the bad side of cloud was as id rather go serverless

[Edu-IT]

Hive might suit you?

 

https://www.papercut.com/products/papercut-hive/

[TechMonkey]

There is this EduGeek.net - PaperCut launches new cloud-native print management solution but not quite ready for education. Coming soon apparently.

[snagrat]

We use Printix with Papercut. Printix handles the deployment of the print Queue and then Papercut lives on a server hosted in Azure.

 

We also have an AD in Azure which everything syncs to.

[jblackburnHWGA]

I'll have a little look at Hive. See if i can get a demo of it going.

 

We're dropping AD completely and just moving to Azure. I can see there's a way to sync in users from Azure but that wouldn't sync in passwords or anything. I think i can hash something together during the summer that will do the job and then look at something more permanent that will allow azure logins etc.

[Michael]

On paper this looks good - Papercut in the cloud, users provisioned from either Azure or Google, but then surely you're still going to need a server to host printers to be deployed, say by GPP for example?

 

Even if the server was in Azure, you're then going to have the issue of print jobs going up and down the WAN. I'm not sure how or why this is any different from Enterprise requirements?

 

What would be nice is if Papercut could be hosted on a Ubiquiti Cloud Key equivalent, maybe attached to one or more MFP, then a synchronisation with a cloud instance for management. I can't see how else it'd work myself?

[jblackburnHWGA]

Its going on about a on site mesh option that moves the data securely internally.

I agree with the cloud key option. Surely they could add in more to papercut MF to enable it to to talk to azure better and release prints better. I don't mind it hosting on site which would be cheap. Short term i just need it to have my users authenticate against Azure and not AD