High Availability

When your organization uses FontAgent© Pro Server, users alwayshave a copy of the fonts they need, whether they’re at their desks,telecommuting from home, in a hotel or on an airplane. Even if yournetwork or font server hardware fails, you and FontAgent Pro stilldeliver font management power to keep everyone productive.

FontAgent Pro Server includes a new, multi-threaded architecturethat takes full advantage of Apple’s new Intel-based, multi-coreMacintosh platforms, delivering a five- to ten-fold increase infont-server speed and scalability. The advanced, efficient architecturesupports libraries with tens of thousands of fonts and eliminates I/Obottlenecks that slow down users and tie up servers.

FontAgent Pro Server is architected to scale efficiently with theneeds of your organization. Start by installing your font server on aMacintosh running Mac OS X 10.3 or higher. At any time, you can addclient-access licenses to the server to support any number of connectedFontAgent Pro clients. And if you need more than one font server—thoughone is enough for most organizations—you can set up another machine inminutes to serve various users and groups on your network.

You can trust that the fonts from FontAgent Pro Server will work.It uses the industry’s most mature font integrity checking, which isembedded in the FontAgent Pro connected client. Administrators importnew fonts into the client software where they are scrubbed andoptimized, and then upload them to the font server. Later, when theserver syncs with client machines, it verifies that each downloadtransaction completes correctly, preserving the integrity of eachuser’s font database.

Lightning-Fast Updates

The network architecture of FontAgent Pro Server is optimized forspeed and reliability. Put simply, uploading and downloading fonts froma connected client is as fast as your network allows. Each time userssync, the FontAgent Pro client connects to the font server anddetermines in a second which fonts and sets it needs. The client thendownloads the fonts and sets required to synchronize it with theserver—so after the first sync session, updates occur almost instantly.

FontAgent Pro Server performs smart, incremental updates of fontlibraries on both clients and servers. The compact updates use littlenetwork bandwidth and occur at blazing speeds, supporting everyone inthe organization, even remote and traveling users utilizing lowbandwidth connections.

The smart synchronization module in FontAgent Pro enables users tosync with the font server manually on-demand or automatically atspecified intervals. When a smart-sync occurs, the server sendscompressed fonts to each user in a background process so they can keepworking without interruption or performance degradation. If a user is aserver administrator, FontAgent Pro also uploads any fonts or setsbeing published to the font server at the same time.

When the FontAgent Pro client synchronizes with the font server, itfirst downloads newly available fonts. If new sets are also availableon the server, the client checks to make sure the fonts contained inthe set reside on the client, informs the user of any missing fonts,and then downloads the set definition.

FontAgent Pro Server stores purchase and license information forpurchased fonts so organizations can ensure they can manage andre-order fonts easily. The Server also tracks license usage and sendswarnings to administrators if license limitations are exceeded.

Administering the FontAgent Pro Server is easy and requires nospecial software or hardware. To administer the font server, a userwith administrative privileges logs in from a connected FontAgent Proclient and a new menu command appears.

• Change server settings
• Manage font license information
• Maintain server-based font libraries
• Define users and groups for distribution
• Import new fonts and verify their integrity
• Upload fonts to the server
• Specify fonts to delete from connected clients
• Use Active Directory services in seconds
• Grant users access to specific font sets and libraries

FontAgent Pro Server then makes all new fonts availableimmediately, and client machines can begin updating their librarieswith the latest fonts. It’s really that easy—and that powerful.

The new release includes an all-new, more efficient transport layerthat uses open-standard XML and TCP/IP to provide importantconfiguration and maintenance benefits. The new communications stackallows admins to automate disk-image distribution of FontAgent Prosoftware to client machines across large networks, as well as the useof custom ports for tighter security control, including http-standardport 80. And to ease administration of large user communities and toprovide users mobility, new FontAgent Pro Server permits the same userto login from more than one client machine at the same time.