Thursday, August 26, 2010

Managing Account Track and Authentication for multiple Konica Minolta BizHubs

Background

One of the churches I work for uses four Konica Minolta BizHub c203s. A while back the rep recommended that all clients direct connect to the printers rather than centralized management. I disagreed and shared the printers on the PDC.

We upgraded the PDC to a Windows 2008 environment a number of months ago. I demoted the older server to a secondary domain controller, print server, and DHCP server. I kept the print services on the older server due to having difficulty with mixing the older XP Pro printer sharing with the new server (something I still have on my list to fix).

The secondary domain controller failed completely a few weeks ago. I transferred DHCP but still had the XP Pro issue with the print sharing on the newer server. I began direct connecting the client groups to the closest printers but experienced issues with the printers randomly dropping off the network. I previously posted a fix that involves disabling the SNMP on the port connection for the printer.

The Next Problem

The church business admin asked that we switch from bulk color / black account tracking to tracking by ministry group or user group. I attempted to add additional account tracking through the PageScope Web admin utility. To access the area required for adding additional accounts, I created SSL certificate. I ran into difficulty when I tried to access the area a second time. I kept having to recreate the cert.

The Fix

I left the problem alone as I needed to deploy a bunch of new computers for the academy and FSM ministries. I researched the issue again tonight and came across the following tool PageScope Data Administration Tool.

http://onyxftp.mykonicaminolta.com/download/SearchResults.aspx?productid=874

The tool allows management for BizHubs on the network, copying of settings from one to another, and uploads of account track info. The tool makes what is usually a frustrating management process easy to accomplish.

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