Best Print Server Methods
Hello,
I’ve been given the unenviable task of totally sorting out our network printers here at my workplace.
We’ve got approximately 700 printers, mainly HP, Epson and Tektronics. Half at least have Jetdirect170x external print servers. The others either internal manufactured come-with-the-printer cards, or the archaic lantronix mps 1.
The printer queues cover 4 subnets, so I was thinking of ordering 4 machines, each with the capabilitity of 200+ queues.
The current setup is two MS Clustered Win2k servers.
Here’s the problem
Imo MS Clustering is “!?$”$^ for network printers. We’ve had numerous problems with it. Losing queues, printers unshare themselves. Getting Lost Delayed Write Data corruption problems, explorer errors, etc.
After trawling through everything on the net about clustering, it’s time to move to something more reliable.
Here’s what I was thinking.
4 Servers. Spec’ed out for approx 1-2gb of ram each, 34gb internal disks each, 2 network cards (one for live, one for backup lan) and capacity for approx 200 queues per server. Raid 0 mirrored disks for fault tolerence.
Reason why I’m posting here, is to ask any seasoned network printer veterans for any advice, or criticism with the above setup, as when I go ahead with this, all the users will have to manually change from the existing queue mapping to the new relevant box that their queue will now reside. (Unless I can get a script to do it)Criticisms / Ideas ?
Thanks in advance
Max Elliott
