High availability for cloud printing: how an active/standby group handles failover without duplicates

01

What a growing company gets

Nebulas Cloud Printing connects the management software to local print queues through the Print Gateway, with a verifiable outcome for every job. Several authorized Print Clients can share an active/standby group, keeping the same destination available even when one workstation becomes unreachable, is disabled, or loses its authorization.

02

How group leadership works

Steps

1. The administrator assigns two or more clients to the same group with different numeric priorities.
2. The Print Gateway assigns a single leader through a renewable lease.
3. Only the leader receives pending jobs; standby clients stay ready without processing in parallel.
4. If the leader is no longer available, a standby automatically takes over leadership.
5. When a client with better priority returns, the group moves back to the preferred workstation in a controlled way.

03

What you need before enabling the group

Prerequisites

• At least two workstations that can reach the same printers, running Windows, macOS or Linux x64.
• Recent login and strong MFA to authorize each PC separately.
• Local queues with the exact same names on every member of the group.
• Outbound HTTPS access to Nebulas services and an account with the Cloud Printing module active.

04

Hypothetical example: three workstations in an administrative office

A hypothetical company installs Print Client on three PCs with access to the same fiscal printer. The PC with priority 1 is the leader and prints invoices; if it is turned off for maintenance, the PC with priority 2 automatically takes over leadership and continues processing pending jobs, without interrupting the management software.

05

Checks to run before going into production

• Verify heartbeat, status, detected queues and active client before using the group in production.
• Confirm that every member exposes the same queues with the exact same name, since names are binding.
• Know that a job with an uncertain physical outcome becomes DELIVERY_UNKNOWN and is not automatically reprinted.
• Check that the previous isolated leader cannot start new jobs after handover to a standby.

06

Roles, traceability and revocation in the Nebulas Portal

In the Nebulas Portal, an administrator assigns clients to the group, sets priorities, and can disable, remove or deauthorize a workstation at any time; the gateway immediately excludes the workstation and another eligible member takes over leadership. Every job remains traceable through the PRINTED, FAILED or DELIVERY_UNKNOWN states, while the client does not open any inbound connections into the corporate network.

07

How to configure an active/standby group

Steps

1. Install Nebulas Print Client on at least two workstations that can reach the same printers.
2. Complete login and MFA in the browser and authorize each PC separately.
3. Verify that every workstation exposes the exact same local queue names.
4. In the Portal, assign the clients to the same group and set different priorities.
5. Check heartbeat, status, detected queues and active client before production use.

Expected result: A print group that withstands the failure of a workstation, with jobs resumed by the next leader and without duplicate prints.

08

Next step

List the workstations that share the same critical printer and verify the queue names before creating your first active/standby group in the Nebulas Portal.