Mirror Configuration for Zebra Printers

Zebra Printers are thermal printers that are used to print barcodes, receipts, wristbands, and RFID tags. They come in desktop, mobile, or industrial variants, each with the ability to do print jobs in increasing quantity and in harsher environments. Zebra printers may be used in large fleets in organizations and thus require management from a UEM solution, such as Hexnode UEM. Hexnode UEM provides advanced management capabilities that can reduce the overhead required for managing Zebra printer configurations. The Mirror settings help to ensure that the Zebra printer configurations are centrally deployed to a network, so that the entire fleet connected to the network can be updated with the latest information for functioning. The information stored on a server can include printer firmware, fonts, formats, and printer settings. In this article, you will learn how to configure the Mirror policy for your Zebra printer network server to manage configurations, using FTP communication.

Configuring Mirror policy via Hexnode UEM

To set up the Mirror settings via Policy,

1. Log in to your Hexnode UEM portal.
2. Navigate to the Policies tab.
3. Click on the New Policy button under Device Policies and click on New Policy in the Create new policy pop-up screen.
4. Choose the platform as Zebra Printer and click Next.
5. Choose Enterprise and click Next.
6. From the list of configurable policies for Zebra Printer, go to Configurations > Mirror and click Configure.
7. Configure the below listed settings:
   

   Setting	Description
   Mirroring server name	The hostname of the FTP (File Transfer Protocol) server that the printer is configured to connect to.
   Mirroring server password	The password of the FTP server that the printer is configured to connect to.
   Mirroring server IP address	The IP address of the FTP server that the printer is configured to connect to.
   Base path of the mirror directory FTP server	The root directory for the FTP service, often configurable.
   Frequency of mirroring updates	Frequency with which the information is updated on the mirroring server, configured in hours (0-100) and minutes (0-100).
   Maximum mirroring retry attempts	If the information transfer fails, retry attempts do not exceed this value. The value can be between 0 and 65535.
   Retry Interval	The interval between consecutive retry attempts for information transfer. The value can be between 0 and 1800 seconds.
   Maximum number of log entries	The maximum number of unsuccessful mirroring attempts that can be logged into the server. Can be any value between 0 and 10000.
   Mirroring feedback	Feedback file storage location on the mirroring server: Specify the location on the server where the mirroring feedback file must be stored. Time interval between feedback file uploads: Maximum interval in seconds between consecutive mirroring feedback file uploads. Can be any value between 0 and 65535.
   Mode of mirroring	Can choose between FTP or SFTP. FTP (default): File Transfer Protocol that transfers data as a plain text file. Less secure. SFTP: Secure File Transfer Protocol that transfers data as encrypted data, useful for transferring sensitive information.
   Reset delay of mirroring	The time delay after which the server retries for a mirroring connection, if failed initially. Can be a value between 0 to 900 minutes.
   Weblink test connection mode	The test connection mode can be either wired, wireless, or both.
   Mirroring application path	The specific directory structure required on the FTP server to allow the printer Mirroring to manage its configuration files, firmware and printer settings.

8. Go to the Policy Targets tab and add the desired printers to which the policy must be applied by navigating to Devices > +Add Devices.
9. Add the target devices from the list and click Ok.
10. Click on Save to apply the policy to the targeted devices and save the policy to Hexnode.

What happens at the device end?

The Zebra printer will get connected to the configured FTP server. This FTP server “mirrors” all the configuration files, firmware and formats pushed to it to all the Zebra printers in the server network.