Printer Redundancy (Slightly off topic)

[Ryan Hanisco]

Hello,

I have used PrintMig for the longest time to make backups of printers and to
migrate them from server to server. I am looking for thoughts on ways to
manage printing when a server drops.

Is there a way that people are managing this or do we just accept that
printers have a single point of failure in the server on which they are
located?

PrintMig:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315983

Thanks.

 

[ptwilliams]

We just accept that if the [local site] server goes down, printers won't be
working. I don't suppose we consider it a big deal. The customers will be
more concerned that they can't get into Exchange...


--

Paul Williams

http://www.msresource.net/
http://forums.msresource.net/

 

[Hank Arnold]

Since people's network printers point to a specific server, it's hard to
imagine an easy alternative to getting the server back on line.... With a
backup of the printer information, it would seem to fix the server or
re-build another server with the same name and restore the printers would be
a relatively short period...

Although, I suppose you could have server running with all the printers
installed, create a batch file that would re-assign the printers, add it to
the AD logon script. then remove it after everyone has re-booted.... I have
a batch file that I use to create all the network printers on Interesting
experiment.... Could be useful in some scenarios....

 

[CB]

Hi Ryan,
I've been using the MS Print Migrator tool for awhile as well. VERY
handy.

One of my print servers went down once and we used this (another print
migrator) tool to re-map end-users printer objects to the new print
queues. Worked great on XP boxes, but a bit kludgey on Win98.

http://www.softwareshelf.com/files/products.asp?type=cat&ID=113

HTH,
CB