Measures reported by CtxXcXAPrintTest

In a Citrix XenApp environment, printing is initiated (by the user) on the server. However, print jobs are not always sent directly from the server to the printing device. Instead, the print jobs can be redirected through the client device.

When a user clicks the Print option, the Ctrix XenApp server:

• Determines what printers (that is, printer objects) to provide to the user. This is known as printer provisioning.
• Restores the user's printing preferences.
• Determines which printer is the default for the session.

The printer provisioning can be controlled and the way you configure it affects what printer's users see in sessions and the speed of the printers. There are two types of printer provisioning namely - static and dynamic.

The two most common methods of dynamic printer provisioning are:

• User provisioning
• Autocreation

• Client redirected printers, including auto-created client printers and a Universal Printer
• Network printers

The autocreation feature creates a list of printers that a user can use after logging on. When the user logs in, their print drivers will be installed and all printers returned in this list will be available for use.

XenApp can auto-create redirected client printers in two different ways:

• By creating a one-to-one match with printers on the user device
• By creating one generic printer, the Citrix Universal Printer, that represents all (or any) printers on the user device

Citrix Universal printers and drivers are printing solutions that let users print regardless of whether or not they have the correct printers and drivers installed.

Universal printing solutions are printers and drivers not tied to any specific device. Consequently, they simplify administration by reducing the number of drivers required on farm servers or the number of printers created at the beginning of sessions. Because users need to access fewer printers and drivers, the speed of starting a session is increased and the complexity of printer administration is decreased.

XenApp includes two types of universal printing solutions:

• Citrix Universal Printer: A generic printer object, replacing the printers that appear in the users Printers control panel during their session. This printer can be used with almost any printing device.
• Citrix Universal Printer Drivers: Windows Native Printer drivers are generic drivers that work with almost any printer. These drivers also work with non-Windows clients. Citrix-created Universal printer drivers consist of the Citrix XPS Universal Printer driver and the EMF-based Citrix Universal Printer driver.

The Citrix Universal Print Server extends XenApp and XenDesktop Universal printing support to network printing. This feature eliminates the need to install numerous network printer drivers on XenApp and XenDesktop hosts, and enables more efficient network utilization. The Citrix Universal printer driver supports direct network printing on Windows and non-Windows clients.

After installing the Universal Print Server components and configuring the new policy settings, a user can add and enumerate network printers through the Windows Provider and Citrix Provider interfaces.

The Universal Print Server feature comprises:

• A client component, UPClient, that you install on each XenApp and XenDesktop host that provisions session network printers and that uses the Universal Printer Driver.
• A server component, UPServer, that you install on each print server that provisions session network printers and that uses the Universal Printer Driver for the session printers (regardless of whether or not the session printers are centrally provisioned).

When using the Universal Print Server, a maximum of 50 active concurrent consumers of print streams is allowed. This means that up to 50 print jobs can be handled simultaneously, independent of the number of actual printers in the environment. When the 51st print job is submitted, it is queued and processed after a currently-running print job completes.

When too many jobs are queued in a print server, it is necessary to figure out which type of jobs are queued often. Administrators should also be alerted to the type of jobs that failed frequently o that they can upgrate the print server accordingly or change the policy settings of the print server as well as the policy settings of the user accessing the print server. For this purpose, it is essential to monitor the jobs and data transferred from/to the Citrix Print server. The CtxXcXAPrintTest test helps administrators in this regard!

Outputs of the test : One set of results for each Citrix Universal Printer of the Citrix XenApp server being monitored.

The measures made by this test are as follows: