Cold Spare print server without clustering??

[Guest]

We are slowing moving to a complete AD environment. I have migrated all of our Printer queues to a new server, which is Win 2003 Std. set up as a Member Server in the new AD Domain.

My question is, the boss would like some redudancy if possible, but we don't have the money to move to a cluster this year.

My theory was to rebuild the old print server after the new server is put into production, and keep it turned off until we have any issues with the newer server. Then we could just poer the cold spare up, and set it up with the same hostname etc. It will have all of the same queues etc.

My concern is that the Printers will all have SID's assigned. We want to set this up so that no changes have to be made to the clients (semi-transparent changeover.) Does anyone have an opinion on this? Will the queues on the client systems work between the 2 servers? Again, the hostname will never change, but it is 2 different physical servers.

Thanks in advance for any comments/advice.

 

[Oli Restorick [MVP]]

It should work fine.

I've had some success experimenting with the Windows Network Load Balancing
service (free in Windows Server 2003 Std). Microsoft does not list it as a
supported configuration. Aside from anything else, you will lose the
contents of any print queues if the server goes down, but I'd say that if
the only issue arising from a failed print server is that a few people have
to resubmit their print jobs then that's fantastic.

You can then use PrintMig to ensure that the servers' configurations remain
identical..

Regards

Oli