(answer below)
Neil Jones said:
Would LBM Systems software protect me against buggy/corrupt print drivers or
printer port software?
This depends. You have choices as to where you want your data to be
converted (via a driver) into printer-ready format. Unless we're
talking about a production printing environment, you are probably
using microsoft and OEM print drivers at the clients to create the
printer-ready files. If your client is creating buggy print files
through the drivers on that client, no spooling feature in an OS, or a
print queue manager, can automatically repair it. For those purists,
yes there is a way, but you'll agree it hardly applies here.
As for buggy print 'port' software, there you have many options. This
is because the 'port' and the driver act independently of each other.
More on this below.
Can the software aid be in the following scenario:-
I regularly need to install new printers to the print server, I would like
to take one of the two print servers offline, then install the new printer,
if the print server then exhibits problems I would then like to switch the
print server off and bring it's partner back online.
There is much you are leaving out, such as how you are sending jobs
from clients to two different servers (VIP, clustering, port status
redirection, interim gateway server, DDNS, round robin DNS staic
entries, application load balancer, etc.). I say this because of the
way you phrased the scenario, where you said take one 'offline' and
stage the new driver on it, test and then bring it online. You should
certainly call me to go into your particular scenario, but for now let
me briefly give you a high level set of printing architecture things
to consider.
Each step in the print process either has inherent choices that can be
made, or has the ability to be enhanced. The choice of which thing(s)
you do where depends on basic things like time, money, effort,
knowledge and patience required. They are not exclusive, and in fact
work best when combined with each other.
Starting with the client, you can either use the windows client
'printer pooling' feature or you can use an enhanced printer port that
can manage multiple print servers. If you choose to enhance your
existing ports (remember, we're talking about on the clients), you
gain the ability to set many job attributes not available with the
stock windows server printing. You can select primary and secondary
print servers, for example, and the client will make the decision at
that level/stage of job delivery as to which print server is up and
online. We supply this client software as part of our normal print
queue management suite, even if you are installing our software on
non-windows servers as well.
The next stage in printing is after that client has decided where to
send the job. The role of that server can be varied. If you install
our server software on that box, it can either act as the final
destination, or (as in your case where staging and release are major
events) it can act as the gateway print server. This server will
accept client jobs, and transparently handle ultimate disposition. You
would simply configure 2 output objects (as well as any clusters,
groups or individual output objects you want it to manage directly),
each one as either an lpd style server (win, Linux, UNIX, etc.) or as
one of our servers (chaining servers together). Now you have a true,
intelligent print queue that your users and admins can manage. You can
administratively take a server down, and selectively redirect jobs to
it to test. The 'other' server automatically acts as backup, and there
is no query/poll delay for the user. The job just comes out. You can
even configure the same physical printer multiple times, to act in
different rolls (clustering, grouping, backup, primary or
stand-alone).
The above configuration is very common with our larger clients, as it
centralizes where print drivers, WINS, DNS and naming/security has to
be managed. We also supply the java and terminal managers for the
servers for as many clients as you like. This means that all your
admins (and selected users) can see and manage their own jobs securely
via wjview, javaw or a simple web page. You also gain page/copy level
job recovery/redirection, etc.
One thing I will tell you is that if you do not send a job to a
printer that is not 'formatted' properly (from the printer's
standpoint), the printers act unpredictably. I've seen everything from
the data light blinking a few times to the file not even being
recognized as printer-ready (which can come from version errors at the
driver level). Things are never perfect, and so adding a true print
queue will allow you to have those jobs disposed of properly, instead
of being lost in the ether. Because our servers can detect that print
status of most printers, we allow you to redirect and route those
jobs-even after they have been sent by the user-right on the server.
The job is never taken off the queue until completely printed, and you
have chosen such disposition.
I hope this answers your question about how our software will help
you! Liek I said, there is so much more.. Just give me a call!
Pat
LBM Systems
http://www.lbmsys.com
Business Critical Output Management
Format, Deliver, Cluster, Retrieve and More!
(800) 898.6434 (203) 966.0661
