Frequently Asked Questions

Category	Question
Card Readers	What card readers and cards are supported? It depends on the brand and model of printer or MFD. Please contact Cirrato for a list of supported card readers. Magstripe or contactless Card readers are available for most platforms where Cirrato followprint is available.
Embedded Follow Print	For what brands of MFDs is embedded followprint available? Currently embedded followprint is available for HP, Ricoh, Konica Minolta, Xerox, Samsung, Kyocera, Canon, Sharp and Toshiba. We are rapidly adding support for other brands, so please contact Cirrato if your brand is not listed. Brands or models where embedded followprint is not yet supported may use the external Cirrato terminal which works with any printer or MFD.
Cirrato One	What happens if the Cirrato server is offline? It depends on how the Cirrato environment has been configured. Direct printing: The Cirrato client recognizes that the server is down and preforms ordinary printout without the server having to confirm. End users won't notice any difference. Follow print: The Cirrato client presents the user with a list of previously used follow print queues. When you select one of the queues the print job will then be printed out as if that follow print queue were a direct printer. In both cases, statistics will be stored by the client and uploaded to the server once the server is back online. Payment solution (users pay for each print job): Cirrato can be configured to deny printing while the server is offline.
Cirrato One	Can the Cirrato server be clustered to provide failover? The Cirrato printing service is not cluster-aware. DNS failover can be used to direct clients to a live server or a secondary server can be brought online using the same IP address. The database may be mirrored or may use log shipping for redundancy. Driver files can be placed on shared high-availability storage.
Migration	How do we migrate from Windows XP to Windows 7 while retaining the queues? The migration MSI package is installed on to the XP clients. On each workstation, it creates an inventory of the existing printers and configurations and uploads this to the Cirrato server. Once the new workstation (Windows 7) is in place, the operator / user runs the migration tool in restore mode. This restores all printers and configurations on each workstation. This will provide the user with the same printers and (if driver is the same) the same configurations as previously.
Card Readers	Does Cirrato support smart cards? Whether authentication at the printer using cryptographic smart cards is possible is highly dependent on the MFD and what card is used. Please contact Cirrato for inquiries about PKI and smart card support.
Cirrato One	Does Cirrato work with multiple domains? Yes, Cirrato works with multiple domains and multiple Active Directory servers. Users can submit the printjob while on one domain and collect the printout at a printer in another domain.
Follow Print	How are card numbers associated with users? Cirrato can query an LDAP server for the card number, read the card number from the Cirrato database or from an external database. When using LDAP, the customer is responsible for updating the card number. If the pager field isn't used, this is usually where we recommend storing the card number to avoid schema changes. When the Cirrato database is used it is possible to use the automatic card database feature which prints a registration page when an unknown card is swiped. This registration page contains a web URL and a temporary code. The user then goes to this web URL (part of the Cirrato webGUI) and logs in using his credentials and then inputs the temporary code, this connects the user with the card number. The next time the user swipes his card at a printer terminal, he is logged in.
Cirrato One	Is printing from Linux supported? Yes, there is Cirrato client software for Linux. Supported distributions are currently CentOS 5, Ubuntu 7.10, 9.1 and 10.04, OpenSuse 11.1 and 11.2, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and CentOS 5.5 and Fedora 12.
Card Readers	Is the card serial number used as the unique identifier? Yes. It is also often possible to configure card readers in other ways, but that is the default.
Cirrato One	Is printing from Mac supported? Yes, there is Cirrato client software for Mac OS X 10.4, 10.5, 10.6 and 10.7.
Cirrato One	Are 64-bit drivers supported? Yes, both 32- and 64-bit drivers are supported. Since drivers are never installed on the Cirrato server, they are just stored there, Cirrato can handle any combination of 32- and 64-bit drivers, operating system specific drivers and different driver versions.
Cirrato One	What server hardware is needed to run Cirrato? "The Cirrato server hardware must fulfill the following requirements or, if a virtualized server, the equivalent of these requirements: Intel Pentium 4 - 1.5 GHz or greater, 2048 MB RAM, or greater. Note: If the minimum requirements for running the server´s operating system with SQL Server exceed the values listed here, they take precedence as requirements for the installation. This is the hardware of one major customer with thousands of users and hundreds of printers/MFDs: Cirrato Server Brand/model: Dell PowerEdge R515 Amount: 2 Processor: AMD Opteron 4184 (2.8GHz, 6 cores) Memory: 8 GB DDR3 Harddisk: 5x 250GB 3.5” SATA Hotplug (RAID 5) Power: 2x 750 watt Operating System: Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 Cirrato Handover Point Processor: Intel DualCore 3GHz Memory: 4 GB Harddisk: 500 GB Power: 2x 750 watt Database Server Brand/model: Dell PowerEdge R515 Amount: 1 Processor: AMD Opteron 4184 (2.8GHz, 6 cores) Memory: 8 GB DDR3 Harddisk: 5x 1TB 3.5” SATA Hotplug (RAID 5) Power: 2x 750 watt Operating System: Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 Database: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise"
Cirrato One	Can we run the Cirrato server on a virtual machine like VmWare or Hyper-V? Yes, the Cirrato services and database can be run on a virtual machine. The virtual machine must meet the same requirements in terms of performance as dedicated hardware. Keep in mind that when using followprint, end-user tolerance for delays is less than with direct printing since the user will be waiting by the device for the printout. Therefore it is important that the performance of the virtual machine is not affected by other software using the same hardware.
Cirrato One	Can I print from laptops? Yes, users can print from their laptops. If the users shuts the laptop down, followprint jobs will not be available for printing until the laptop is powered on and available on the network again. For customers with a lot of laptop users we recommend that Cirrato Handover Points be set up that will handle the file transfer to the printer on behalf of the laptop.
Cirrato One	Is it possible to use the Express version of Microsoft SQL Server to host the Cirrato database? Yes, the Cirrato database can be run on the Express versions of Microsoft SQL Server but it is very important to be aware of the limitations of the Express version. The Express versions of SQL Server 2005 and 2008 are limited to one CPU, 1 GB of memory and 4 GB and 10 GB databases respectively. No profiling tools are included and data import/export capabilities are limited. Log shipping is not supported. SQL Server 2008 R2 Express with Advanced Services does include Reporting capabilities but earlier Express versions do not. Hence, performance, features, redundancy and supportability of Cirrato will be limited.
Cirrato One	What happens if the end-user PC changes IP addresses? Cirrato keeps track of IP address changes so that the Cirrato server knows on what PC a printout is stored.
Cirrato One	Can Cirrato share an SQL Server with other databases and systems? Yes, the Cirrato database can share an SQL Server instance or SQL Server with other databases and systems. Keep in mind that when using followprint, end-user tolerance for delays is less than with direct printing since the user will be waiting by the device for the printout. Therefore it is important that the performance of the Cirrato database is not affected by other software using the same hardware or SQL Server instance.
Cirrato One	Is it possible to restrict color use? Yes, it is possible to restrict color printouts to certain users or groups. Please note that Cirrato uses information provided by the printer driver to decide if the printout is color or monochrome. A lot of printer drivers report color even for monochrome printouts. It is therefore important to verify the correctness of the driver before deciding to implement color restriction rules.
Cirrato One	Does Cirrato work with any printer driver? Bi-directional communication between printer and driver is not supported by Cirrato. Bi-directional communication may be used initially to create a configuration but has to be disabled before the configuration is uploaded to Cirrato. Some drivers which send printjob meta-data as a small print job might not work.
Cirrato One	How does the licensing work? Cirrato is licensed per printer. On top of that there is yearly support and upgrade licenses. There is also a basic followprint license which allows simple "release all" type followprint. Embedded followprint is licensed per device.
Cirrato One	How much network traffic is generated by Cirrato? About 1 kB of application layer data is transmitted between the Cirrato server and client during a basic direct printout. As more functions are added, a few more kilobytes are added. 1 kB/s is communicated between the Cirrato printing service and the database continuously. About 20 kB of TDS data is transmitted between the Cirrato printing service and the database during a printout. If you have Follow Print, then an additional 3.5 kB per followprint job is communicated between the printer and the Web Service API.
Cirrato One	Is it possible to submit print jobs from server applications to Cirrato? Yes. If the application runs on Windows, the Cirrato client can simply be installed to facilitate that. If not, one option is to set up a Windows server with the Cirrato client and associated Cirrato printer queue and share the queues using "Print services for UNIX". Another option is to use the Cirrato EUT_API to submit jobs using our submit_job.dll interface. This API requires that the Cirrato client software is installed. Spooled print job files from any source can be submitted as any user using this interface.
Cirrato One	Which methods are available to install printer queues? Printer queues can be installed using login scripts by calling the command line program cirrato.exe, the graphical user interface program CirratoSearch, helpdesk personnel can push printer queues to PCs using the Cirrato webGUI and end users can install printer queues using a web based tree view. None of these methods require the users to be local administrators.
Cirrato One	Is printing from thin clients possible? Yes. If it is desired to assign printer queues per user, the Cirrato client can be installed on a server and the Cirrato printer queues shared from there. If follow-print is used, only a single printer queue needs to be used, this printer queue can be installed on the terminal server (we do not recommend installing more than one printer driver directly on a terminal server). Another option is available when the thin clients connect to virtualized PCs, if the state is saved between logons, it is no different than a regular PC, but if the image is cleared on logout, login scripts are needed to reinstall the Cirrato printer queues. (Cirrato printer queues are installed as per computer, not per user printer objects.)
Cirrato One	Is it possible to pre-distribute drivers to client PCs? Yes. Cirrato driver archives are normally downloaded from the server when needed to perform a printer queue installation on a client PC. These driver packages are then kept on the client PCs in case they should be needed again to avoid unnecessary downloads. Any method that simply copies these driver archives to the client PCs in the directory where the Cirrato client expects to find them will work. It is also possible to use the drivers that are included with Windows.
Cirrato One	Can printouts be charged to a department or project? Yes, printouts and in some cases copying, scanning and faxing can be charged to a Client Billing code. A Client Billing code can represent a project or department. Reports are available that show how much has been printed for a given client billing code. If the user´s department is available as an attribute in LDAP, the attribute value can be used as the client billing code.
Cirrato One	Is printing from thick clients possible? Yes. Cirrato printer queues can be shared over the Terminal Server session. This enables the benefits of local spooling even when using a Terminal Server.
Cirrato One	How do we migrate our workstations from using legacy print spool servers to using Cirrato? The Cirrato client can send information regarding installed printer queues to the Cirrato server. There is also a stand alone binary called cirratoinventory.exe that fulfills the same purpose. If no local TCP/IP-port printers are installed on workstations, this inventory only needs to take place on print spool servers, if not, the workstations also need to execute the inventory. Cirratoinventory.exe can be placed on a network share end executed from a logon script (negating the need to install the Cirrato client software in order to perform the inventory). When the inventory is complete, Cirrato provides administrative tools to view and use the inventoried data to create printer queues in Cirrato. It is also possible to configure the Cirrato server to instruct the Cirrato clients to delete the old printer queues or UNC-printer connections when installing the corresponding Cirrato queues. Printer drivers are not extracted in the inventory process, these need to be manually uploaded to the Cirrato server using a wizard application called CirratoPak. The same is true for printer configuration settings.
Cirrato One	Does Cirrato have any built-in mechanisms to install and update the client software? No. Installation and upgrades of the Cirrato client software can be done by assigning or redeploying to a Group Policy Object (GPO).
Scanning	Can I scan a document to my home directory? Yes. Scanning to a shared folder or home directory is possible on most platforms where Cirrato followprint is available.
Cirrato One	What network ports need to be open for Cirrato to work? The Cirrato client listens for incoming TCP connections from the server on port 5001. The Cirrato server listens for incoming TCP connections from the workstations and laptops on port 5000. The Cirrato server also listens for incoming TCP connections from administrators on port 5005. The Cirrato monitoring service needs to be able to query all printers using SNMP (usually port 161). Since Cirrato is a direct printing solution, all end-user workstations and laptops need to be able to connect to all printers on TCP port 9100 or 515 depeding on if LPR is used or not. All port numbers are possible to change if needed.
Scanning	Can I scan a document to my own email? Yes. Scanning to our own or someone elses email address is possible on most platforms where Cirrato followprint is available. In a lot of cases restrictions can be put on who you may send emails to.
Server Prerequisites	Cirrato Server Prerequisites Windows server 2008 / 2008 R2
Cirrato One	Does Cirrato support IPv6? No, IPv6 is not yet supported.
Cirrato One	How do we allow guests to print from a wireless network or a public computer? Cirrato can be configured to display an authentication dialog to users printing from computers with specific IP addresses or subnets. The guest user may then authenticate using an account available in LDAP or a custom user database. To this account a short ID can be associated, which allows the user to authenticate and retrieve his printout at a followprint terminal (embedded or external). Cirrato client software should be installed on the public computer or made available for download to guests who bring their own laptops. Alternatively, one PC with the Cirrato client installed could be configured to share printers using IPP (Internet Printing) with authentication.
Reporting	What is required to display the reports? Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services must be installed.
Configurations	What configurations need to be made in the client software? The server IP and license key must be defined so that client can communicate with the Cirrato server. You can also choose to enable the "selfservice" feature, which enables users to manage their print jobs and, if they are using Follow Print with manual authentication, their authentication codes. Configuration is done using any third-party msi-package editor (for example the Microsoft Orca tool).
Security	What protocols are used? Besides using our patented Cirrato protocol (which is the core functionality of Cirrato itself, ticket based printing using single server, driver deployment and so on) we use the standard TCP/IP layer.
Security	Which traffic is encrypted? As a general rule, all forms where the user has to enter their credentials are encrypted. Examples are: The Cirrato Web GUI (if HTTPS has been enabled), almost every machine terminal has the option to encrypt credentials (HTTPS), Cirrato MMC Snap-in, Cirrato Client (if user confirmation has been enabled), Self Service (if HTTPS has been enabled).
Server setup	Do the database, SQL and IIS have to be on the same server? No. The Database / IIS may run on any other server the cirrato server has TCP/IP connection to. For testing purposes, its simpler to have all on one server. For deployments, the SQL server is usually in a consolidated SQL server running other databases. IIS run on the cirrato server and reporting services run on the report server used by the common SQL server. For testing purposes, all 4 components may be on the same server to reduce the time needed for installation. For production, Cirrato server, IIS, SQL , Reporting services (actually an IIS application that may very well run on the IIS server) may be splitted on 3 or 4 servers.
Server Prerequisites	Database Server prerequisites SQL Server 2008 / 2008 R2 / Enterprise / Standard / 32 / 64, they all are OK for small scale deployment (test environment) For production, the capacity must be asessed based on number of transactions.
Server Prerequisites	Reporting Server and IIS Web Server The IIS should be the one included in Windows Server 2008 (standard / R2). Make sure IIS Application server is installed at same time. IIS 6 metabase compatibility layer must be installed to provide support for the automatic installer. Some SMO related .msi packages might have to be downloaded / installed from microsoft.com to the IIS server prior to deployment of the application if the SQL client software is not installed. The affected packages are mentioned in the documentation.