Print servers in 2025. The term alone can spark heated opinions. Are they a dying breed from a bygone IT era, or still an essential part of modern infrastructure? The truth lies somewhere in between—and often depends entirely on your environment.
As we’ve found, the right answer isn’t about ditching or defending print servers—but about knowing where they fit in a modern, hybrid print strategy.
In this in-depth Q&A, Zach Lander-Portnoy, CRO, and Andrew Parlette, CTO of Tricerat, explore whether print servers still matter, when direct IP makes more sense, and how organizations can confidently navigate a hybrid reality.
Zach: “Sometimes today, you hear the word ‘print server’ and it harkens back to NT351 in 1994. It feels like an archaic term. But the core concepts of that print server device still hold true today.”
Andrew: “Right, and in every other way of IT management, we’ve modernized—dashboards, real-time monitoring, better management. The same modernization applies here. If you layer the right tools on top, you can still bring print servers forward in a modern environment.”
Zach: “With a lot of the customers we talk to, we see different perspectives, different opinions—very strong opinions sometimes on both sides of the aisle. Some love and rely on print servers, while others have moved on and manage printing happily without them.”
Andrew: “Part of that reaction comes from memory. People think of those giant on-prem boxes. But today we’re seeing print servers used in cloud VMs or hybrid setups—it’s not what it used to be.”
Q: Why do print servers still break things in 2025?One reason the print server conversation is so charged? When print fails, it really fails. Zach: “We had a customer tell us they scrapped all print servers after one failed in 2018 and triggered a chain reaction up to the VP. One crash led to a major architectural change.” Andrew: “To be fair, there were times when a print server crash could break the whole setup—mainly because of print drivers or the way the Windows Spooler worked. That risk still exists to a point. But there are so many more tools now—visibility monitoring, load balancing—that help prevent total failure.” Zach: “If your reason for removing print servers is technical—that’s one thing. But if it’s just trauma from a bad experience years ago, maybe the issue wasn’t the print server itself. Maybe it was how it was managed.” |
Andrew: “A decade ago, if you had more than a few hundred queues on a print server, you were rolling the dice. Now we regularly see environments running 1,000, 2,000, even more—if the setup is right.”
Zach: “That’s the modernization of the universal driver from Lexmark, Xerox, Canon, and others. But even with one universal driver, if you’ve got a big fleet of devices and need to dynamically assign printers, that’s still a heavy IT load. Centralizing helps.”
Andrew: “And the Windows Print Spooler has improved, but it’s still single-threaded. You need a smart layer on top that handles job distribution and driver control.”
Zach: “Exactly. It’s not just about the Spooler anymore. We’re talking redundancy, virtualization, cloud VMs. It’s a smarter, more resilient print stack.”
Andrew: “Virtualization is a big piece. You can live-migrate servers, spin up a new image, or shift traffic automatically if one instance fails.”
Zach: “And with centralized print management tools like ScrewDrivers, you can create redundant servers. If one goes offline, traffic is rerouted automatically. That gives you both high availability and disaster recovery.”
Andrew: “If you’ve got 30 different printer models across multiple departments—MFPs, barcode printers, label printers—each one needs a driver. Removing the print server doesn’t make that go away. You still have to manage all those drivers.”
Zach: “This is where centralized management makes life easier. Especially in hybrid environments—some workloads are on-prem, some are in the cloud, and your users are everywhere. You need a single interface that works across all of it.”
Q: Which industry benefits the most from print servers?Zach: “There’s an on-prem nature to healthcare that can’t be virtualized. Patients expect a face-to-face interaction with a nurse or a doctor. And that usually ends with a piece of paper in hand.” Andrew: “You can virtualize apps and data, but not the printer—or the person using it. Those two things need to be together.” Zach: “Healthcare is 24/7/365. You can’t afford printing to fail. Add the rise of decentralized care—mobile units, remote clinics—and you’ve got even more reason for centralized print control.” |
Andrew: “Direct IP is where the desktop prints directly to the printer—no server hop. If you’ve got 50 clinics, each with one printer and one desktop, Direct IP might be your best bet. It reduces the need for WAN traffic and simplifies routing.”
But in non-persistent VDI environments, it’s a nightmare. Drivers need to be pushed out every login—sometimes multiple times an hour. That’s not scalable.”
Zach: One Tricerat customer uses print servers in Azure VMs for HQ and Direct IP for field offices—maximizing control without over-engineering remote setups. The hybrid approach is one way to balance control and simplicity.
Andrew: “Not exactly. It’s more nuanced. Print servers work best in centralized environments—like VDI or a few main offices. Direct IP works when everything is distributed and static.”
Zach: “Most environments are mixed. Print servers for 90% of users, Direct IP for the edge cases. Problems start when teams force one model onto every scenario.”
Andrew: Think hub-and-spoke: the ‘hub’ is your HQ or main hospital—centralized, running print servers. The ‘spokes’ are remote clinics—better off with Direct IP.
Mini Diagnostic: Are Print Servers or Direct IP Right for You?Not sure what’s right for your environment? Ask yourself these three questions: Andrew: “Here are the three questions I always ask:
And sometimes the wrong approach is trying to manage a print server for a decentralized workforce—or trying to manage without a print server in a centralized one. That’s when frustration peaks.” Zach: “And occasionally it’s just about managing expectations. If you’ve got one printer, one universal driver—great, run with it. But 99% of environments are more complex. That’s when centralized print management pays off.” |
Zach: “We’ve seen companies go all-cloud because a print server failed once. That’s like banning all weightlifting because someone got hurt deadlifting. When done right, it’s still one of the strongest tools you have.”
Andrew: “Exactly. It’s not about going all-cloud or all-on-prem. It’s about choosing the right tools for each environment. And in most cases, that means hybrid, flexible, scalable print infrastructure.”
Zach: “Ultimately, print servers aren’t obsolete—they’re misunderstood. The real challenge is no longer ‘print servers vs. Direct IP,’ but how to smartly combine both in ways that match the business.”
Let us help you architect the right mix of print server and Direct IP solutions.
A hybrid printing architecture map
A cost-benefit comparison
An industry-specific deployment playbook
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