Hi @CRUNDELL,

Primarily, a Print Agent host should have access to actual physical printers. Furthermore, the Print Agent should be installed on a server as close the to the physical printers as possible to minimize any network connection issues.

For instance, let’s assume your company is in US and has sites in UK and Australia as well. If the Application Server host(MWS) is in US and each site has its own set of physical printers, then installing multiple Print Agents on servers close to each site would be much desirable; one PA for US, one for UK and one for Australia. 

That is not to say you cannot install the Print Agent on Application Server host. I have seen customers who have done it without any issues, mostly when all the users are in the same country. 

This is documented in F1 docs as well:

https://docs.ifs.com/techdocs/foundation1/010_overview/250_operational_reporting/140_print_agents/default.htm

Hope this helps!

In addition to @Charith Epitawatta’s answer above, we have done this when needed but it really isn’t good practice for Production environments.  For example, there would be no way to restart the Print Agent server without needlessly impacting the MWS.  Also, if the Print Agent process happens to go rogue and consume e.g. CPU due to a bug then there is a potential for impact to production performance.

For a robust production environment I would strongly suggest putting this and other periperal services (e.g. Crystal Web Services, Demand Planner) on something different from the MWS.

Nick

I have always worked with the rule of installing on a Server local to the physical printers, but we have recently been looking at hosting a server in Azure for this purpose. Has anyone else tried this yet?