I'm just looking for suggestions on setting up network
printing. We currently have an AD consisting of 5 DCs and
150-200 PCs (I've lost count). When the AD was first
created, the first Server was given the responsibility of
Print Server in addition to it's other AD duties.
A few weeks ago, the server had a hardware problem and had
to be taken down during regular business hours for a Dell
tech. to replace the SCSI Backplane. With 4 other DCs,
access to the domain wasn't an issue but any user that
printed through that server couldn't print until the
server came back up-unless we physically went to each
machine and set up another printer.
So, that got me to thinking. Is there any way to set up
printers on a network without installing a cluster (our
servers are a mixture of 2000 and 2003-not "Advanced
Server" or "Enterprise Edition") that would allow me to
change the print server on the fly to prevent outages if a
server had to be taken down during business hours?
I've thought about scripting the printers so that it uses
the shared printer on the logon server that a particular
machine is using to log on to the network (I can get that
information at run time), but then we will have to
duplicate every printer on every AD server and make them
all "visible" in AD-and that would be a nightmare. We've
also considered using certain servers for certain
departments but that would still allow a department to go
down in the event of a server crash.
Any suggestions? (Or, what am I missing...?)
Thanks,
Michael
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