For many in IT, the holiday period is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the office empties out, meetings evaporate, and ticket volumes finally dip. On the other, you become the lone guardian of the entire print and server infrastructure. The keeper of the keys, monitor of logs, resolver of mysterious “it stopped working” messages sent from someone sunning themselves in Cancun.
So, in the spirit of the season, here’s a practical guide to getting through the festive season with your systems (and your stress levels) under control.
1. Document settings and run a manual backup
The holidays are not the time to discover that your only DNS documentation exists in someone else’s head, or in a three-year-old Slack message that no one can find anymore. So before the exodus begins, spend an hour or two just noting down your essential configurations. Things like:
- Critical server locations and credentials (stored in a secure underground vault of course. No, just us?)
- Printer queues, drivers and deployment configurations
- Any on-the-ground knowledge of system quirks, workarounds or temperamental devices
- Who is responsible for what. Especially if the usual owner is on a beach somewhere
You should also run a manual backup or snapshot of the Application Server before you log off for the final time, just in case. If you’re planning major changes for the new year, use the “Batch User Import/Update” or “Export” features to save a CSV snapshot of your current user balances and quotas. It’s an age-old saying for a reason: documentation is static, backup is active recovery.
2. Run a “Year-End” expiry audit
In our experience, the most common cause of January 1st failures isn’t a server crash; it’s an expiration. That’s why you should always run a Year-End expiry audit with a specific checkpoint for SSL Certificates and Licenses.
Remember, SSL certificates often expire at the end of the calendar year. If your certificate expires, users may face browser warnings or connection failures when trying to visit your website and other online interfaces. Always make sure you verify keystore and certificate expiry dates now, so you aren’t scrambling to renew them during the break.
You might also check that your PaperCut NG/MF license support isn’t set to expire on December 31st or January 1st, which can happen with annual budget cycles. It’s an easy thing to overlook.
3. Set up remote monitoring (so you’re not glued to a dashboard)
If you’re using PaperCut (and why wouldn’t you be?) now’s the perfect time to make sure remote monitoring is fully enabled and, just as importantly, tested. Our System Health API makes it easy to keep tabs on stuff like server load, database health and print queues from wherever you’re spending your downtime.
All you have to do is set up a simple dashboard, check your tokens and endpoints, and confirm that if something goes sideways, you’ll know. All without manually refreshing logs at 12:01am on Jan 1.
If you don’t like the idea of checking dashboards at all, you can also configure Scheduled Reports as a backup monitoring tool, which basically means configuring PaperCut to email you a daily or weekly Executive Summary report. This has an added benefit, too. If the email arrives, it means the email server, database and application server are all up. If it doesn’t arrive, you know something’s wrong—without ever opening a dashboard.
4. Automate error alerts (so you only get pinged when it matters)
A holiday isn’t really a holiday if your phone is buzzing every time a user prints a 200-page PDF, or a queue unexpectedly pauses. With PaperCut’s built-in system notifications, you can set up smart alerts for genuinely important events (things like server failures, connector issues, low-disk warnings) while letting the minor stuff slide. It’s a really nifty feature, even during the rest of the working year. Avoid alert fatigue by setting thresholds sensibly. Remember, a paper jam is not the existential crisis that a dead application server is.
Holidays are a prime time for security vulnerabilities (like the Log4j incident, which happened in December), which is why you should also think about some holiday security hardening. At the very least, consider restricting admin access. If no-one’s in the office, the admin web interface should only be accessible to specific IP addresses (like your VPN or management subnet). This minimizes the attack surface while you’re away. Easy.
5. Plan and predict resource usage (and perform some low-traffic maintenance)
In our experience, holiday printer usage generally goes one of two ways:
- Almost nothing prints, or
- Someone decides December 23 is the ideal day to refresh the annual binder of 600 onboarding forms.
There’s rarely any in between, so your system should be ready to scale in either direction. This doesn’t have to be hard. Use logs from previous years to predict what you’ll actually need. If usage plummets in your environment, consider scaling down VM resources (memory, storage, networking etc.), pausing all non-essential services, and maybe scheduling updates or maintenance while the load is light.
This is also the perfect time for database hygiene that usually impacts performance. If you’re using an external database (like PostgreSQL or SQL Server), the low user load makes it an ideal time to run “VACUUM” and “ANALYZE” operations, or archive old logs. This way, the system is nice and snappy when users return in January.
6. Get familiar with cloud printing (if you aren’t already)
Cloud printing reduces the burden on your on-premises servers, simplifies deployments, and is ideal when half the team is working remotely (or on leave). We’ve written about its virtues before. If you haven’t explored it yet, the holiday lull is the perfect time to skim our free guide, play with configuration settings, and maybe try a small pilot rollout.
Interested? Everything you need to know about getting on the cloud print bandwagon is right here.
7. Modernize your deployment. Yep, it might finally be time
If you’re still clinging to Group Policy Objects (GPOs) for print deployment, the holiday season offers some breathing space to bring things up to date. Maybe it’s finally the time to jump on some cloud-based deployment tools? Perhaps you should try those hybrid and zero-trust workflows you’ve been reading about?
Testing these things during a quieter period reduces risk and just think how good you’ll look when everyone wanders back into the office in January to find an all-new system, running perfectly.
8. Build a robust escalation plan (so you’re not called for every paper jam)
The goal for every sysadmin should be simple: protect the on-call team from unnecessary suffering. And for that, you’ll need an escalation plan, or at least some sort of pathway for tickets to follow. It should include things like:
- Clear criteria for when to escalate (e.g. service unavailable vs “help it’s jammed again”).
- A simple decision tree for office staff.
- Backup contacts in case your primary is unavailable.
- Accountability for on-site tasks (you should not be driving into the office just to fix Tray 2).
Consider appointing a ‘Holiday Printer Champion’ to handle the on-site troubleshooting, then map out your escalation strategy from there.
9. And finally… enjoy the solitude
The office will be quiet. The halls will echo. You may see a tumbleweed drift past the server room. This is actually the best thing about working over the holiday break. So, try and make the most of it. Craft a great out-of-office message (“I’m currently monitoring our print fleet from a secure, undisclosed location (also known as my couch), finally take iron-fisted control of the office playlist, stockpile on snacks like a sysadmin squirrel, and celebrate the calm before January arrives. Because trust us: it’ll be a distant memory all too soon.
So, there it is! With a little planning, a few smart automations (and a dash of festive spirit) you can glide through holiday cover feeling prepared and peaceful, the way a sysadmin should. May your logs stay clean, and your alerts stay silent.
