Publishing Printers in AD what is the advantage

[Guest]

We have AD for sometimes now.
We have around 3000 printers all HP in our environment. It is not publsihed
in AD, it is distributed and we are not using Printer Queues, just using
Jetdirect and TCP/IP printing etc..

What is the advantage if I published those printers in AD?

Can I control the access centrally I mean this Printer "XYZ" for example
will only be shared for this a particular group.

Please advise. Thanks

 

[Guest]

Yes, you could control access to the printers based on group membership
(everyone would see the queue, but only authorized users/groups could connect
& print).

It's also easier to manage printer moves this way. If a printer gets a new
IP address, for example, you only need to change it at the print server, not
on every client.

It does introduce a single point of failure, however, in that no one will be
able to print while the print server is down. It also adds overhead to the
machine that will act as the print server.