Redundant print servers

[ITWombat]

I know you can make a print devices redundant by puting them in printer pool.

 

What I want to know if there is some kind of DFS technique to make a printer UNC independant of the server the print queue is actually hosted on.

[ChrisH]

Maybe using 'round robin' DNS?

 

Edit actually I was thinking along the lines of more than one server incase one fails. You can give your servers all the same alias such as print server. Theres a reg tweak you need to do to get the machine to answer to both.

[Richie1972]

That sounds interesting.

I could have a second server that would act as a backup print server in case main print server fails or needs to be taken down for emergency maintenance.

Anyone got any info on implementing this?

[ChrisH]

In my scenario it should spread the load (if it worked) between the two. If one did go off I can still see it complaining though due to cached information etc.

 

The regtweak is here anyways to get the shares to answer to more than one host name.

 

I would be interested to know if it worked but I can foresee certain problems.

[sahmeepee]

ChrisH: If the problems are due to both servers answering to the same hostname, you could just implement it as an emergency measure - when printserver1 goes down, set up an alias in DNS to point clients at printserver2.

 

From a management point of view I can see that as being very unwieldy though, because you'd need to have all your printers configured identically on both servers. For any new printer or change in printer config, you'd have to repeat the process on your backup print server. Yuck. If you have print quota software you might need to mirror its settings regularly and/or pay extra license fees on it.

 

My best effort for a printserver plan B (beyond a spare identical server and good backup software) is to run the print server as a virtual server and back the files up to somewhere off the server. At least that way, it can be run from another server quickly if yours explodes.

[ChrisH]

To have an identical setup would be easy to achieve with the printer migration tool you get from M$.

[sahmeepee]

Wow. I'm amazed that I've never seen that before - that could come in very handy. If anybody wants to download it it's at:

 

http://tinyurl.com/fttyx

 

(There's no installer, just run the .exe)

 

Quota software could still be an issue, but having quotas in place is less important than having printers.

 

Thanks!

[ChrisH]

I works very well I have used to twice now without any problems

[ITWombat]

Strict Name Checking is on default even on Windows 2003. Are there any security concerns about turning it off? Surely securing the DNS server and disabling unnecessary services and ports any SMB servers should be more important.

 

Duplication of shares from server to server is only the start. In many environments you also have to think about duplicating any queue managment software (Pcounter, PMS etc).

[ChrisH]

All true but you didnt go into that detail with your initial question

[mullet_man]

To have an identical setup would be easy to achieve with the printer migration tool you get from M$.

 

Can this be used to move a one printer from an XP client to another?

 

As I have a teacher who needs to install a laser cutter for use at our CLC, and one of our teachers has the driver installed correctly.

 

Thanks.

[ChrisH]

I have never tried it but I dont see why not as the print functions are basically the same on a server and client no doubt minus the IPP printing etc.

You can only try and report back to us

[mullet_man]

Yep this has seemed to have worked, it copied every printer from one XP client and then I restored them to another, it didn't delete the printers already installed on the target client as well.

 

I will let you know if it works when the teacher goes to the CLC to do this laser cutting.

 

Thanks again!

 

Stevo.