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2nd Print Server for failover

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by alab01p 1 view

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Is there a way to have a second print server (same hardware, software and configuration (ports, drivers, installed printers)) and have her take all the print jobs in case of failure of the first print server (even with manual intervention)? I do not care about loosing the jobs that were printing at the moment of the failure of the first print server and I am looking for a solution OTHER than server clustering. I am also looking for a solution that does not require for any changes to the clients. I use Windows 2003 server (with Active Directory) and Windows 2000 Professional SP4 and the shared printers are published through the AD.

I already tried to play with DNS and CNAMES (I saw something like this in an article at MS's knowledge base speaking for print server consolidation) but had no luck.

Anybody?

Thank you in advance

I do not know how many points to put on this question (I am very new to Tech Republic) but I think 250 points are good enough.

6 replies

by bfilmfan

You need a printer pool, which is easily done with Windows 2000 or 2003.

And you get 1000 points for opening a question and 1000 points for closing it. You also get points for participating in the discussions, as well as answering technical questions.

You can create a printing pool in Windows 2000 in which two or more of the same printers are connected to one print server and behave as a single printer. Note that the physical device that performs the actual printing is referred to as a printer; a logical printer is the physical printer's software interface on the print server.

By connecting one logical printer to multiple printers through multiple ports on the print server, the printing pool appears to users as a single printer. When a user prints a document to the printing pool, the document is printed on the first available printer in the pool. Users are not required to know which printer is available. The logical printer checks for an available port and then sends documents to ports in the order in which they were added.

This configuration is useful in high-volume environments because it maximizes printer use and minimizes the time that users may have to wait for their print jobs to be printed. Additionally, it is easier to administer printers because you can manage multiple printers from the same logical printer on the server.

by bfilmfan

Before you set up a printing pool, consider the following items:

Two or more printers are required. Windows 2000 does not limit the number of printers in a pool.

The printers in the pool must be of the same type and use the same printer driver.

Printer ports can be of the same type or mixed (such as parallel, serial, and network).

Add the fastest printer to the pool first so that documents are sent to the fastest printer before they are routed to the slower printers in the pool.

Because users do not know which printer receives and prints their documents, it is a good idea to place all of the pooled printers in the same physical location. If the printers are not in the same physical location, users may not be able to find their printed documents.

How to Create a Printing Pool

NOTE : This procedure assumes that the printers that you want to pool are installed on the print server and are listed in the Printers folder. To add a new printer, click Add Printer in the Printers folder.
Click Start , point to Settings , and then click Printers .

Right-click a printer that you want to include in the printing pool, and then click Properties .

Click the Ports tab.

Select the Enable printer pooling check box.

In the list of ports, select the check boxes for the ports to which the printers that you want to pool are connected.

Repeat steps 2 through step 5 for each printer that you want to include in the printing pool.

Click OK.

Best of luck with setting up your printer poo

by alab01p

Sorry but it seems that I miss something here. My problem is not the redudancy of the physical printer but the redudancy of the print server. The senario that I had in mind goes like this:
The print server fails, I make some quick changes wherever I need to and the clients can continue printing to the same physical printers (that had no problem from the beging) without having to install a new logical printer (the same physical one who is now served from a backup print server). When I correct the problem of the original print server I make again the nesesary changes and put it online and all the clients can continue printing to the same logical printer without any changes.
Printer pooling only helps if I have different physical printers right?

by dgolic

Clustering IS best solution, but you can always create two separate print servers with same shared printers. (1) Connect printers from each server to clients or (2) use group policy logon scripts to connect clients to printers. With solution one, when print server fails users can switch to another connected printer, and with solution two, you can connect printers from working print server to clients (it does require some downtime, and logoff/logon for users (possibly even restart). So, cluster IS best solution wether you like it or not.

by alab01p

Well dgolic. This wouldn't help much because I should explain to every user why he has every printer installed twice in his
workstation.

Anyway I think I found the answer. I keep the two printservers synchronized (use of MS "Print Migrator") and when print services on the first one become unavailable I disconnect her from the network and I change the primary name of the second one. This seems to work fine. The only fears I had was because of the publishing of printers to AD, but it doesn't seem to have any side effects.

Anyone who has tried this already or has any notifications?

by lchill

We are using Legato Remote Management Console running on Win 2K servers cluster. One controler server and 2 print server/queue units. We have had many problems with the fail-over, and are now debating a change. When adding a printer, it must be done on the current server then you must fail over to the other to add it there also. It does handle normal operation well.

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