By evaluating your availability requirements, you can determine if you need to increase print server availability and minimize downtime if a server stops responding. Certain users or groups in your organization might need highly available network printing. An accounting group, for example, might print time-sensitive documents such as payroll checks. In such a case, you need to examine high-availability solutions for that group.
If you determine that you have users who need highly available printing, you should consider either creating a print server cluster or putting a standby system in place in the event that your print server becomes unavailable. Both of these methods have trade-offs in cost and manageability. The following sections describe these trade-offs and can help you decide which method is more appropriate for your organization.
Creating Clustered Print Servers to Increase Availability
A cluster is a group of individual computer systems working together to provide increased computing power and to ensure continuous availability of mission-critical applications or services. The computers in this group use a common cluster name, appear to network clients as a single system, and distribute the cluster’s workload among the group.
Clustered print servers provide failover and failback capabilities, which enhance the availability of print servers by allowing individual print servers, known as nodes, to fill in for each other if one of them fails (although there might be a short period when the printers are unavailable while the resources fail over to the other nodes). With clustered print servers, you also can perform maintenance on one node, without interrupting printing operations, by moving the cluster resources to another node.
You can create clusters only on servers that run Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition or Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition. However, after you set up a cluster on these computers, you can administer the cluster, including installing and configuring printers, from any computer on the network that is running Windows 2000, Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 1 and the Administration Tools Pack, or Windows Server 2003. For information about installing the Administration Tools Pack, see "Windows Server 2003 Administration Tools Pack Overview" in Help and Support Center for Windows Server 2003.
Before deciding whether to use clustered print servers to increase printer availability, consider the following requirements:
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Clustered print servers have additional costs and hardware requirements. A clustered print server requires two or more physical servers running Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition or Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition. Because of the specialized hardware and the software requirements, the overall cost of implementing clustered print servers can be greater than the cost of providing a standby print server.
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Clustered print servers require administrator expertise. Implementing and maintaining clustered print servers requires experience or specialized training. Less experienced administrators might cause significant problems and delays, and mistakes can lower the availability of the print servers.
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For more information about deploying Windows server clusters, see "Designing and Deploying Server Clusters" in this book.
Creating Standby Servers to Increase Availability
Using a standby server to increase print server availability is a simple, low-cost alternative to clustering. The best method for setting up a standby server is to make sure that the hardware and software, including drivers, are exactly the same as the standard print server configuration that the design team has created. If you have a standby print server based on the standard print server configuration, you can replace any print server on your network that is based on the same configuration. In the event that a print server stops responding, rename the standby server to the same name as the server that you are replacing, and then connect the standby server to your network. For more information about standard print server configurations, see "Designing for Efficient Use of Hardware in Printing" later in this chapter.
Consider the following issues before creating standby print servers:
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Standby print servers carry additional costs. Providing a standby server requires two servers for each of the print servers that you want to be highly available. Ideally, these two servers have identical hardware and software configurations, including patches and printer drivers. The minimum requirements for a standby server are the same as the requirements for any server running Windows Server 2003.
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Standby print servers require additional maintenance. If you use standby servers, any changes that you make to the primary print server need to be made to the standby server also. If a server stops responding, you can rename the standby server and remove the primary print server from the network by using a Remote Desktop Connection.
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This method of increasing availability can result in some downtime, which is limited to the time that it takes to rename the standby print server, attach it to the network, and remove the primary print server.
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Users must resubmit any print jobs that failed to print. Print jobs that have been spooled but have not yet printed when the server stops responding must be resubmitted to the standby server after it replaces the primary print server.