Although I accept there are good reasons for choosing third party
products to do this there are also valid reasons for not doing so. (mainly
cost)
I support 120 + servers with approx 45 print drivers installed and that is
it. We have several thousand users and rely on client mapped printers. We
don't use a third party solution. We are still on "old" technology with XPe
and Windows 2000. We use UPD when we don't have the native driver installed
(or mapped)
We generally don't have any printer problems and the only real comment
from people is that it can be slow. We know the speed is vastly better with
PS4
I do think sometimes we look at adding too many third party products which
can over complicate a solution or potentially make up for something that
wasn't properly thought through or designed correctly in the first place.
Don't get me wrong. I know Citrix printing can be a pig but it can work
too.
Keep your driver list to a minimum. Don't let users or admins intall
printer drivers. Use native drivers off the windows source media. Use
printers form a reputable vendor. Create sensible mappings. Test your
drivers before rolling them out.
Malcolm
*From:* thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] *On
Behalf Of *Landin, Mark
*Sent:* 02 February 2007 19:30
*To:* thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
*Subject:* [THIN] Re: Printer Hell
I can do this online ... I'm not shy :)
My true opinion is that this software saved my sanity, and it has paid for
itself many times over during the 4 years I've been using it.
I have no drivers (none, nada zip) loaded on any servers, except what
comes with Windows 2003 itself. (I guess I could delete those too, if I
wanted.) We probably have 50+ different printer models represented in our
organization right now, not counting personal printers people might have at
home, at the hotel, etc.
It helped me by not having to keep track of printer drivers and
versioning, diagnose blue screens, worry about what printers my users in Abu
Dabai happen to pick up at the local flea market, or what kind of old
Deskjet the CEO happens to have at home when he VPNs in. I don't have to
worry about replicating drivers to all my servers, etc, or manage driver
equivalency files, or worry about universal print drivers and what features
they may have or not have.
Based on that, it helped me by removing all these headaches from me, the
other support staff, and most importantly, the users! Maximizing my
happiness is secondary to maximizing theirs.
If you still want more info, drop me a line on my email and we'll arrange
something!
------------------------------
*From:* thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] *On
Behalf Of *Schneider, Chad M
*Sent:* Friday, February 02, 2007 1:09 PM
*To:* 'thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx'
*Subject:* [THIN] Re: Printer Hell
I am investigating this….can you let me know your true opinion, offline?
How it helped you, how many printers you have, drivers you had in the
farm, versus how many you have now?
------------------------------
*From:* thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] *On
Behalf Of *Landin, Mark
*Sent:* Friday, February 02, 2007 12:59 PM
*To:* thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
*Subject:* [THIN] Re: Printer Hell
I'm using Simplify Printing (standalone, not their suite). It's been
heaven, comparatively.
------------------------------
*From:* thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] *On
Behalf Of *Mike MacDonald
*Sent:* Friday, February 02, 2007 12:52 PM
*To:* thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
*Subject:* [THIN] Re: Printer Hell
We might be to that point. Although with 22 published desktop servers and
9 published app servers and the licensing on those done per sever....it gets
expensive fast. That being said, it may be well worth it when it comes to
TCO. Just curious, which 3rd party solution are you using?
-Mike
On 2/2/07, *Landin, Mark* <Mark.Landin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I have three words for anyone in "printer hell":
third
party
printing
Nothing is perfect, but I've run a 100-user farm for three years, with
international and mobile users, and have not had to spend any time
diagnosing or fighting printer problems.
You don't have to live this madness. Please, friends, I hate to see you
suffer needlessly!
------------------------------
*From:* thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] *On
Behalf Of *George Yobst
*Sent:* Friday, February 02, 2007 11:06 AM
*To:* thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
*Subject:* [THIN] Re: Printer Hell
Hi Mike,
I'm still going thru printer hell as well, and have tracked one problem
down to a Policy change in the CMC (and I didn't do it), so check that.
For some unknown reason, the printer in the OU group it was assigned
to got changed to the next group down the list (no way I would have done
it).
Printer issues seem to be almost monopilizing my time lately, so good
luck!
-George
On 2/2/07, *Mike MacDonald* <mike5287@xxxxxxxxx > wrote:
I know I am not the first one here to be in printer hell, but recently
things have taken a turn for the worse. Something changed that caused
drivers to get loaded on our W2K/PS4 servers from clients. This even though
driver installation was restricted to administrators, only allowed from a
single trusted source and our PS4 policies said that client printers would
only use native drivers if they were available. Long story short is all of
a sudden drivers started installing - we got up to 135 drivers on each of
the 20 servers in the farm. Along with the high number of drivers we started
having frequent spool service/Citrix Print service hangs or crashes which
has resulted in logon delays as printers try to get connected at logon.
Currently I am going through each server and eliminating unneeded drivers.
I was able to go from 135 down to 53 drivers per server. Still too many, but
there are that many different models of network printers here. I also
renamed the ntprint.inf to make sure no additional drivers got installed
without me putting them there. After I get rid of the extra drivers I am
going to go through the remaining drivers on the print server and the Citrix
servers to make sure they are compatible. If they are not I will change the
driver used for the device to one that is compatible.
One last bit of background is that we use a mix of client printers and
network printers that logon scripts connect users to at logon and most users
connect to a published desktop from thin-clients or via the Web Interface.
I guess I am looking for any suggestions on how to get out of printer
hell. I am ready to build new servers running W2K3/PS4 but don't want to
move the same problems forward to the new servers. I also feel I must be
doing something wrong related to the Citrix Print Service because I can
restart it and the spool service then instantly try to stop it and it won't
stop - has to be killed. Is there something else I should be doing or has
anyone had similair issues, and what was done to correct the problems. I am
going to go through cleaning up drivers as mentioned, but if I need to do
something else I am all ears!
Thanks in advance for any suggestions or assistance!
-Mike MacDonald
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
George Yobst, Library Technology Analyst phone: 503.723.4890
Library Information Network of Clackamas County fax: 503.794.8238
16239 SE McLoughlin Blvd, Suite 208 web:
http://www.lincc.lib.or.us
Oak Grove, OR 97267-4654 email: george.yobst@xxxxxxxxx
"...it is impossible for anyone to begin to learn
what he thinks he already knows." - Epictetus
