Printer clustering?
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Is it possible to do something like a DFS for printers? Maybe actually use DFS for printers? That would be awesome.
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What's the end goal? Printers do something very different than storage.
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@Grey You can load balance multiple printers, as in a print job will print out of the least busy one. This requires identical printers.
But I don't think that's what you mean, do you?
Select a single printer by name, and it acts like DFS where it prints out to the printer that's in your site? I don't think it can work like that... there's too much guts to it and works completely different.
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@Grey That's what printers with multiple output trays are for. Unless someone is printing out things that should be done on a dedicated printing press on an office printer, I don't see the need. Seriously, a good printer is so fast it'll have the print job done before someone can get to the printer.
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The goal here centers around having a single printer be shared exactly like a DFS so any one our print servers can handle the print request and be fail tolerant. The problem I'm trying to solve with that is the result of having single printers (large MFPs) deployed to users through GPOs that rely on a single print server.
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@Tim_G said in Printer clustering?:
@Grey You can load balance multiple printers, as in a print job will print out of the least busy one. This requires identical printers.
But I don't think that's what you mean, do you?
Select a single printer by name, and it acts like DFS where it prints out to the printer that's in your site? I don't think it can work like that... there's too much guts to it and works completely different.
Yes, I'm aware of the load balancing. It's really neat! I wish this were so simple. I just need fail tolerance, but your idea of location based printing is a great idea, too. I don't think AD supports that unless there is something in Sites & Services that I don't know about.
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@Grey said in Printer clustering?:
The goal here centers around having a single printer be shared exactly like a DFS so any one our print servers can handle the print request and be fail tolerant. The problem I'm trying to solve with that is the result of having single printers (large MFPs) deployed to users through GPOs that rely on a single print server.
I don't understand the DFS comparison. What's wrong with normal failover print servers? What aspect would normal HA CUPS lack that you need?
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@Grey said in Printer clustering?:
Yes, I'm aware of the load balancing. It's really neat! I wish this were so simple. I just need fail tolerance, but your idea of location based printing is a great idea, too.
DFS is not like fault tolerance, I think that's the confusion. If you just want HA print serving, use CUPS as the print server and make it HA however you like. Normal OS HA, VM HA, whatever.
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@scottalanmiller said in Printer clustering?:
@Grey said in Printer clustering?:
Yes, I'm aware of the load balancing. It's really neat! I wish this were so simple. I just need fail tolerance, but your idea of location based printing is a great idea, too.
DFS is not like fault tolerance, I think that's the confusion. If you just want HA print serving, use CUPS as the print server and make it HA however you like. Normal OS HA, VM HA, whatever.
Not using Linux.
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@Grey said in Printer clustering?:
@scottalanmiller said in Printer clustering?:
@Grey said in Printer clustering?:
Yes, I'm aware of the load balancing. It's really neat! I wish this were so simple. I just need fail tolerance, but your idea of location based printing is a great idea, too.
DFS is not like fault tolerance, I think that's the confusion. If you just want HA print serving, use CUPS as the print server and make it HA however you like. Normal OS HA, VM HA, whatever.
Not using Linux.
Well just fix that, then. Why not?
