Citrix Printing with VSPA

Today, organizations are beginning to incorporate virtualization strategies in their IT infrastructures. The Digital Transformation of the workplace drives many of the requirements related to virtualization, and the effort to reduce costs is chief among these requirements.

Most resources within an organization’s IT department are correctly focused on security issues related to adding connectivity to virtualized desktops and applications. However, the complexity introduced by virtualization technology also affects the way people print. This, in turn, changes the printing experience for end users as well as how help desk staff troubleshoot printing problems.

For this reason, LRS began working very closely with Citrix many years ago. As part of the Citrix Ready program, we were able to develop our own solutions to work seamlessly with the latest versions of Citrix products and overcome some of the biggest challenges related to printing from virtualized environments.

An important issue is the persistence of printer definitions across different sessions of the same virtual desktop. Without this persistence of definitions, users could lose any changes they make to printer definitions and settings each time they log out of a virtual session… which is a major frustration. Another problem is the variability between zero clients. Issues like these inevitably increase the effort and complexity of managing printer queues, drivers and security rules across a server farm.

Virtual Session Printer Agent (VSPA) Citrix printing solutions from LRS help IT administrators easily associate users, printers, and terminals in an intelligent manner to ensure reliable Citrix printing across the enterprise. Using a simple yet powerful web-based interface, authorized staff can define printers for end users or thin/zero client terminals and designate which printer is the default device for application printing.

Intelligent management of user- and terminal-specific printer definitions ensures that a worker always has the ability to print to a nearby device, to the printer back in his or her office, or to any required location on the network. The VSPA software minimizes the chance of Citrix printing problems and makes printing from Citrix as reliable as printing from any physical Windows system.

A user can search for additional printers with a simple interface to easily discover the printer that meets their needs:

The VSPA solution eliminates complexity in virtualized printing environments by: 

• Enabling “proximity-based” printing, to help roaming employees quickly access documents
• Supporting heterogeneous VDI terminal environments
• Making VDI printing transparent to end users, for lower help desk and training impact
• Providing utilities to bulk upload and synchronize printer definitions and associations

Sound interesting? Take a look at the video here and find out how the LRS VSPA solution can help your organization: