Printer disaster recovery dillema

[Matthew Clark]

We currently have many printers on 1 server, and are looking for a good
method of backup and recovery of printers in AD. I am currently using
PrintMig.exe to do a weekly backup of all our printers. Our question is
, is there some type of DFSish utility that would allow fault tolerance
for printers but not use Microsoft's printer clustering? If this is not
possible, how could we restore the printers from the PrintMig tool, but
quickly and easily get those printers back out to the users without much
or no user interaction?

Matthew

 

[Kenxl Zou]

Hello Matthew,

Thank you for posting.

From your post, my understanding on this issue is: You want to know how to
backup and restore printers except MS printer clustering. If I'm off base,
please feel free to let me know.

Based on my research, Print Migrator 3.1 is the tool that can meet your
requirements.

You can refer to the KB article below to find the detailed steps for
performing the restoration:

214795 How to Back Up and Restore a Print Server Configuration
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;214795

Please let me know if you have any other concerns, or need anything else.

Sincerely,
Kenxl Zou
Microsoft Online Partner Support

Get Secure! - www.microsoft.com/security

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Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, 06 Mar 2006 14:10:02 -0600
From: Matthew Clark <[email protected]>
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Subject: Printer disaster recovery dillema
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We currently have many printers on 1 server, and are looking for a good
method of backup and recovery of printers in AD. I am currently using
PrintMig.exe to do a weekly backup of all our printers. Our question is
, is there some type of DFSish utility that would allow fault tolerance
for printers but not use Microsoft's printer clustering? If this is not
possible, how could we restore the printers from the PrintMig tool, but
quickly and easily get those printers back out to the users without much
or no user interaction?

Matthew

 

[Matthew Clark]

Thank you for your response. My original e-mail says we use the Print
Migrator tool to backup our printers currently. My question is there a
failover method that does NOT require clustering? If not, how are most
people doing disaster recovery for printers in their environment? Are
you just down for X amount of minutes or hours while you restore? Are
you doing a second print server with the printers on them already?

Matthew

 

[Alan Morris [MSFT]]

Scenario at Microsoft:

Print server has crashed (or in some alternate state that has been an
intermittent pain in the side and we need to understand the issue fully) so
we want the development group to investigate.

Using a backup printmig cab we restore the printers to another server
(usually a machine that is due for retirement). While this is occurring,
the network cable from the primary machine is unplugged if the machine is
still on the network. The domain machine account and DNS entry get deleted
for the primary machine.

Printmig restore completes, the machine gets renamed to the primary machine
name, and the clients automatically reconnect when the server comes back on
the network after the machine name reboot.

After the investigation has completed, we schedule an off peak time to bring
the primary server back into it's original role. I also like to make sure
any jobs that are pending on the backup server due to a printer offline
state get copied to the spool directory on the primary machine so the jobs
will print the next day when the printer returns to service.

Either delete all the printers on your backup or use Windows Resource Kit
tool setprinter to unpublish the printers.


Your scenario:
Renaming a machine with printers already installed would be the fastest
recovery until the primary system is once again available. If you do keep a
backup server make sure you unpublish the printers or stop the server
service when not in use. You will get people connecting to this server.

publish or unpublish all the printers on a server with the reskit tool
setprinter.

setprinter \\servername 7 dwAction="unpublish"

setprinter \\servername 7 dwAction="publish"

--
Alan Morris
Windows Printing Team
Search the Microsoft Knowledge Base here:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;[ln];kbhowto

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[Paul Lawrence]

In answer to your question about the DFSish utility. I know that a DCR has
been filed to Microsoft but it was cut out of Longhorn due to time
contraints. They will probably implement it either as a service pack
enhancement or wait to the next verison of windows after longhorn.

Print Migrator does work well, as do adequate system state backups of your
server.

 

[Matthew Clark]

How bad of an idea is it to have Printers on a DC? It concerns me a
little because we can not easily to what you mention. Should we
SERIOUSLY consider moving printers off the DC and onto a Member Server?

 

[Kenxl Zou]

Hello Matthew,

Thank you for your clarification.

We may not connect all the printers on the same computer if printer offline
is not allowable in your environment.

Here at Microsoft, we connect printers to different computers. So all
computers with that printer rarely crash at the same time.

If you connect all the printers to one computer, there will be a time gap
between the crush and restore.

Please let me know if you have any other concerns, or need anything else.

Sincerely,
Kenxl Zou
Microsoft Online Partner Support

Get Secure! - www.microsoft.com/security

=====================================================
When responding to posts, please "Reply to Group" via
your newsreader so that others may learn and benefit
from your issue.
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--------------------
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2006 08:01:36 -0600
From: Matthew Clark <[email protected]>
User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5 (Windows/20051201)
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Subject: Re: Printer disaster recovery dillema
References: <[email protected]>
<[email protected]>
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Xref: TK2MSFTNGXA03.phx.gbl microsoft.public.win2000.printing:17099
X-Tomcat-NG: microsoft.public.win2000.printing

Thank you for your response. My original e-mail says we use the Print
Migrator tool to backup our printers currently. My question is there a
failover method that does NOT require clustering? If not, how are most
people doing disaster recovery for printers in their environment? Are
you just down for X amount of minutes or hours while you restore? Are
you doing a second print server with the printers on them already?

Matthew