Blueprint Print Center System Monitor

Notes:

• The System Monitor tab is available on Blueprint 5.3 or later versions only.

• For more information on System Monitor, refer to the Blueprint-Pharos Print Center Guide in the Pharos Help Center.

The System Monitor tab shows, the overall health of the Blueprint system. Users with the View System Monitor role (set up in Blueprint Administrator) can perform the following tasks in the System Monitor tab:

• View the health status of the Analyst and all Collectors in the organization

• Identify devices that are active (used for Secure Print) and those that have not been used for Secure Release Here for more than 3 days.

• Configure if a server can be used for Sentry Print.

Note:

Permission to access the System Monitor tab in Print Center is only available to users with the Administrate Blueprint or View System Monitor logon role (configured in the Dashboard > Logons screen in Blueprint Administrator).

Note:

If you’ve upgraded from an earlier version of Blueprint, you may have the older health check time of 60 minutes. You may want to change the server health test to occur every five minutes, so you are notified more quickly when a problem occurs. You can change the health check time in the Servers > Settings > General > Update Frequency screen of Blueprint Administrator. The updated value is automatically propagated to all Collectors over the next couple of hours.

How the System Monitor Works

1. By default, each Blueprint server performs health check every five minutes. The details and status of all Blueprint servers (including the Analyst) are displayed on the System Monitor tab in the Print Center.

2. If a test fails, an email notification is sent to the specified address. Depending on the severity of the error, the email will be sent immediately or during business hours only.

   1. For high-severity errors, an email is sent immediately. An example of high severity error is when the Secure Release Service test fails.

   2. For low to medium severity errors, an email is sent during business hours only. Examples of errors under this category are disk space is below the threshold or % of CPU utilization is above the threshold.

   3. Emails are sent only when the status of a test changes from OK to Error.

System Monitor Tab in Print Center

The System Monitor in Print Center includes three sub-tabs:

• Server Overview

• Server Detail

• Secure Printer Status

Server Overview

The Server Overview tab shows, at-a-glance indication of the overall health of the Blueprint system, organized by group. This helps you identify problematic server groups immediately and take the appropriate action. Each chart shows the percentage of servers in error, active, disabled, or warning state.

• Green – Shows the percentage of servers that have no issues.

• Red – Shows the percentage of servers that are in error state. This indicates that failures in the servers are likely to prevent the Blueprint servers from operating correctly.

• Yellow – Shows the percentage of servers in Warning state. This indicates that the failure may not affect the operation of the system.

• Grey – Shows the percentage of servers in Disabled state. This indicates that you’ve set the Override published health status setting to Offline for these servers via the Print Center. Configuring this setting to offline is used when you want the load balancer to stop sending secure jobs to the server, so you can perform troubleshooting or maintenance operations.

Clicking a Server Group’s name opens the Server Detail view, showing more information about the status of each server in the group.

Server Detail

The Server Detail tab displays the current state of all Blueprint servers (Analyst and Collectors) in your organization. This will help you ensure that the Blueprint servers are up and running. It will also allow you to detect any issues before they escalate into a major problem.

You can also configure Blueprint to send email notifications when issues arise. For example, if a Collector on a site is down, Blueprint can send an email alerting the appropriate person of the problem.

Viewing server details

Clicking on a server name in the Server Detail tab opens a window showing the list of health checks performed. This helps guide actions that you can take to resolve any issue or improve the performance of your servers.

See the Blueprint Print Center Guide for more information on the health tests that the Blueprint System Monitor performs.

Viewing the health status of a server

Each server is displayed with the following fields:

Updating Server Details

The Update button in the System Monitor > Server Detail tab allows you to update details or settings for a specific server. Select the server that you want to update and configure the server details as desired.

• Add, edit, or delete a server group name for a server

• Enter a server description

• Disable or enable email notification

• Override published health status

• Allow or Block Server for Sentry Print Provisioning

Overriding published health status

To access the Override published Health Status setting, click the Update button. There are three options to choose from:

• None - This is the default setting. This option is suitable for print environments without load balancers.

• Online - This option is useful in an environment where load balancers are used. For example, when a server’s health status reports ‘Error’ the System Monitor sets the server offline, but if the error does not affect Secure Release Here (e.g. users are still able to print), setting the Override published health status to Online will keep the server in the load balancers pool. This means that the load balancer will ignore the health status and continue to process requests from the server.

• Offline - This setting is useful when performing maintenance operations or applying updates/Service Packs, for example. When this option is selected, the server is marked Offline and the load balancer takes the server out of the pool. Configuring the Override published health status option to Offline stops the load balancer from sending secure jobs to the server so that you can perform troubleshooting or maintenance operations.

Disable/Enable Email Notifications

If a health test fails, an email notification is sent to the specified email address (Servers > Settings > Email Server) in Blueprint Administrator.

To disable email notifications:

1. Navigate to System Monitor > Server Detail.

2. Select the server that you want to stop sending an email notification.

3. Click the Update button and set the Disable Email Notification setting to Yes.

Allow or Block Servers for Sentry Print Provisioning

Print Center allows administrators to control which Analyst and Collector servers can be used for Sentry Print provisioning (Also known as securing Printers). By excluding servers that are not intended for secure printing such as those outside a load‑balanced group, Blueprint helps prevent accidental server selection and ensures Sentry Print traffic is routed only through approved servers.

By default, Sentry Print is installed and provisioning is allowed on all servers. Administrators only need to adjust these settings when they want to exclude specific servers.

1. Navigate to System Monitor > Server Detail.

2. Select the server you want to configure.

3. Click Update.

4. Locate the Sentry Print Provisioning setting.

   

5. Set the toggle to one of the following:

   1. Allowed – The server can be used to provision and secure printers (iMFPs).

   2. Not Allowed – The server is excluded from Sentry Print provisioning workflows.

6. Save your changes.

• When Sentry Print Provisioning is set to Allowed, the server appears as an option when securing printers.

• When set to Not Allowed, the server is hidden from provisioning workflows and excluded from Sentry Print provisioning traffic, even when the Sentry Print service is installed.

Note

This feature is available in Blueprint 6.1 or later only.

Secure Printer Status

The Secure Printer Status tab shows the active devices and those not being used for more than 3 days. This provides administrators a quick way to identify devices that may need attention.

The Secure Printer Status tab is divided into two panes.

• The top pane shows active devices (used for Secure Print) and those not being used for more than 3 days. The view is filtered by Server Group.

• The bottom pane consists of a tabular view of the devices that have not been used for Secure Release Here for more than 3 days.

Take note that a device will not be listed in the bottom pane if one of the following conditions is met:

1. The device has no Terminal attached to it.

2. The device is set to ‘Not Reported on’ in the Devices screen.

3. The device is used for direct printing only.

4. The device was last used for releasing a secure job more than 30 days ago.