We’ve supported running PaperCut on clustered servers for two years now and have some very large installations utilizing this feature. These range from large corporate and finance institutions to universities supporting 50k+ users. Clustering allows PaperCut to push into these really large sites.
Over the past two years I have learned that clustering should be considered as an investment rather than a solution. Purchasing a larger hard drive to fix a storage capacity problem is a solution. Implementing clustering may also be a solution but it’s far more of an investment. The pay-off is often not immediate. The real benefits come when the unexpected occurs. A power supply meltdown would usually make a system administrator’s heart stop, however to a cluster administrator it brings a smile as they realize all their hard work just paid off ;-)
While on the topic of clustering, any organizations looking at implementing PaperCut on a clustered Linux setup should take a look at the notes the guys at Zen Consulting have put up. If you’re in Canada and looking for assistance in this area, I can highly recommend Ryan and his team as they’ve done a great job with some challenging installs.
