Administration of printers in a corporate network. What options, schemes?

Question

Network administration

Our small organization has 4 mid-range MFPs connected over the network (Kyocera, Samsung, Ricoh), and 3 local shared printers from the beginning of the millennium and a trend towards an increase in the number of departments, hardware and admin work.
I didn’t work in other offices, I don’t know how others do, but I assume that in large organizations the zoo is much more interesting, and I would like to understand what deployment, administration and monitoring practices are now the most common.
Are you using deployment MSI driver packages? (some vendors provide handy driver package configurators)
Or a separate print server and assignment to users through policies? (However, as I understand it, this is only printing, without scanning)?
Or do you practice building up an enikei army with zerg rushes and manual ennobling labor?
How then do you set it all up and monitor it centrally?
Yes, and without SCCM.

Answer 1

In Windows, an excellent print server, drivers are installed from it. Even at the zoo you can survive. But a monovendor is certainly better, especially with compatible consumables (yes, an ideal world). Further to differentiate access to printers. For example, we create a group in hell, we call it by the name of the printer, we throw there users who want to use this printer. We are writing a script that will read access groups and connect certain printers according to the groups. The script can be distributed through gpo, for example, when the user logs in (not very best practice, but as an option). Scanning, it all depends on the printer model. Kuocera can send scans to the mail, create a service box and let it fall on it, or draw mail settings for everyone who needs a scan. Cooler printers are able to devour HELL, and already issue a list with emails. i.e. in essence the work, set up once and go. Throw only the user in group and the printer will appear. For monitoring consumables, here whatever your heart desires, you can set up alerts in the printers themselves. Can be collected through printer interfaces (they are different for everyone, so you need to smoke mana for a specific case).

Answer 2

To start with a print server, and get rid of the zoo, preferably a mono-vendor, otherwise various rakes with drivers are likely, and of course with deployment, monitoring, cartridges. But on your volumes it is not relevant yet.