File and Print?

[anne1]

We are rejigging our servers this summer, at present all the printers are on a general purpose box which we want to retire, with sophos and other odds and ends. Our home folders are on a Windows storage server dell powervault 500. Industry norm is for file and print on the same box, what do people think in a school? Does the end of lesson surge of 300 kida printing and saving through the same server make this unwise? What do you do?

 

Thanks

[OverWorked]

Don't worry about it. Printing is a very slow activity anyway. It will run on any low-spec server.

 

I currently have a low spec server running as secondary DC, DNS, DHCP, WSUS, Sophos, and print for about 8 printers, including 2 heavily used staff multifunction printers. It isn't a file server, though.

 

I doubt if making your existing file server do printing as well will make a noticable difference.

 

Have you thought about just virtualising the old server? If you're already familiar with it it could save a lot of work.