Maxing out--how do I scale?

[Michael Sweet]

Arild Jensen wrote:
> We're running SLES9 with the included CUPS (cups-1.1.20-108.22). We
> do a fair amount of printing, about 1500 reams per week.
> 
> cupsd runs at between 90 and 100% CPU utilization most of the time,
> running on only one processor.
> 
> Is cups really single-threaded?

The scheduler is.  All of the long-term processing is farmed out to
helper programs (filters, backends, etc.)

> How can I scale CUPS?

Without more information about your configuration, it is impossible
to help you.  The printer drivers you use and overall architecture/
setup of your systems will have a dramatic effect on CUPS performance.

Some of the information we'll need:

     1. How many printers?
     2. How many jobs per week for those 750k pages per week?
     3. What kind of hardware are you using?
     4. What printer drivers are you using?
     5. What type of files are you printing?
     6. Are you printing directly on the server or from a client?
        a. If from a client, how is the client configured?
     7. What program are you using to submit your jobs?

-- 
______________________________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Easy Software Products           mike at easysw dot com
Internet Printing and Document Software          http://www.easysw.com