Print Servers availability

[Guest]

We do not have the budget for "failover clustering".

But, we need a solution that will redirect users to a different print server
when the server is down. the printers are all IP printers and more than one
member server can act as the print server, has all of the drivers and the
standard TCP/IP port

for example,
\\printservermain\hpprinter = 192.168.0.5
\\printserverbackup\hpprinter = 192.168.0.5

Windows server Printservermain goes down for maintenance and will be down
for an unspecified time interval. Windows XP Users are already logged on to
the network and have already been connected to the printer server shares.

Is there anyway that I can setup a process where without user or
administrator intervention, users are automatically redirected to the
\\printerserverbackup\hpprinter?

the only way I can see this working is to setup a virtual IP address or
virtual share for the printers, like DFS only DFS doesn't support printers.

I need a poor man's failover printer solution. Should I be looking at a
hardware print server instead?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

 

[Guest]

Try Double Take from NSI.