moving printers from one server to another

blastman

blastman

blastman

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hi all,

(yet another thread from me... I'm testing all your skills today!!)


I have a printer server that has all my network printer install on. I have used the Microsoft printer migration tool to backup all the drivers and settings and then restored them on my new server, job done.

I have mapped the printers on all my clients using the UNC path to the printer server using logon scripts. (ex, \\printerserver\brother270n)

My question is, what happens when the 1st printer server fails? How do all the clients on my network know that the printer is still available on another print server?? and how do they then get redirected to the new print server??

Currently, If the 1st print server dies, all my clients are still going to be pointed to \\printserver\ and not \\printserver2.

help??

Thanks in advance!
 
Wouldn't it be easier to just rename the other print server when an error occurs? In effect you'd be routing people to the backup print server whilst the main one is being fixed.
 
wozencl said:
Wouldn't it be easier to just rename the other print server when an error occurs? In effect you'd be routing people to the backup print server whilst the main one is being fixed.
Click to expand...

it would but the other machine is a backup dc so renaming it is out of the question.
 
Ah I see. What version of Windows is the bdc server running? If it's 2003 there is a configuration that allows multiple servers to work together, whether or not this would be compatible with the server acting as backup dc aswell I do not know.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/278455

I'm afraid it's not my area, so I can't give any more information.

Let me know how you get on though :)
 
Last edited:
Printer pooling is having more than one physical device, under the one virtual device. And wont help in this case.

What you could try, is a third DNS for the print server, something like PrintServer, and have its own DNS entry, that you can chage to which ever server is the live print server.

So ineffect in dns you will have:

Printserver1 = ip x.x.x.x
PrintServer2 = ip y.y.y.y
PrintServer = ip x.x.x.x or y.y.y.y whichever is the active server.

However means you will need to do a ipconfig -flushdns on every client, or a client reboot.

What you really need is a Windows Cluster, however you need Server 2003 Enterprise for clustering, along with some form of shared storage.
 
DustyMiller said:
Printer pooling is having more than one physical device, under the one virtual device. And wont help in this case.

What you could try, is a third DNS for the print server, something like PrintServer, and have its own DNS entry, that you can chage to which ever server is the live print server.

So ineffect in dns you will have:

Printserver1 = ip x.x.x.x
PrintServer2 = ip y.y.y.y
PrintServer = ip x.x.x.x or y.y.y.y whichever is the active server.

However means you will need to do a ipconfig -flushdns on every client, or a client reboot.

What you really need is a Windows Cluster, however you need Server 2003 Enterprise for clustering, along with some form of shared storage.
Click to expand...

Cheers for all the replies :)

As I've got about 200 users, asking them all to restart or flush thier DNS isn't really a good option as they can't follow simple instructions! I'm not going to have time to go round to them all becasue if the 1st server does die I'll be too busy trying to get it back up again!!

The two servers in question are 2003 std edition.

I'll have a read in to clustering and weather it can be achived on 2003 std.

any other ideas??

Cheers again :)
 
humm, can't use clustering as it is only for datacentre and enterprise editions.

What do you guys think about using NLB to create my printer server. The if one server fails it will just use the other.

??
 
I Think that Printer Pooling will work for the OP Situation!
Print Pooling works in the following manner.
"If one device within a pool stops printing, the current document is held at that device. The succeeding documents print to other devices in the pool, while the delayed document waits until the non-functioning printer is fixed."
Is this not what your wanting OP ? Or are you wanting something else?

Cheers
Rob
 
tbh, I'm not really bothered which method I use.

All I need is to be able to have a backup print server so if my main one dies the backup will automatically pickup the slack and my users won't know the difference.

This is all part of a backup DC that I'm configuring so if the 1st fails we don't loose, DHCP, DNS, AD and printing services.

I've had a little read in to print pooling, but it seems to suggest that it's use is for sharing printing between printers (it's cheaper to run 2 smaller printers than one big one). This isn't what I'm after as I've detailed above.

cheers anyways :)
 
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