We have two domain controllers with printers shared via Active Directory. The upgrade from NT4 was mostly flawless, but we were disappointed that we weren't able to easily create some fault-tolerance features with AD, e.g.:
Let's say we have:
BigBadServer LittleBadServer
ProdPrinter ProdPrinter
The share name is the same, as it serves the same printer. Everyone maps their "Production Printer" to \\BigBadServer\ProdPrinter (even when you select it from AD, this is the client path you get). Now let's say BigBadServer gets blown up (this isn't so far from the truth).
Now, we have 100 client machines who don't print until they MANUALLY remap to LittleBadServer. This is an emergency, because 90% of our users click randomly as soon as anything unexpected happens. We've considered drop-in server aliases, scripting, registry changes, mapping both printers, and all sorts of stupid things (I even poked around in file replication dynamic paths) that would be solved if we could simply:
Modify some link in AD to point SomePrinterPointerObject to LittleBadServer\Share, instead of futzing with "\\Server\Share" at the CLIENT.
Clients are mostly Win98 with ADSI, handful of 2K Pro, a few XP. Presently two DC's, and one, ah, forest. This seems so basic, and I think semi-automatic scripting is the only "free" solution we have. Any thoughts?
Let's say we have:
BigBadServer LittleBadServer
ProdPrinter ProdPrinter
The share name is the same, as it serves the same printer. Everyone maps their "Production Printer" to \\BigBadServer\ProdPrinter (even when you select it from AD, this is the client path you get). Now let's say BigBadServer gets blown up (this isn't so far from the truth).
Now, we have 100 client machines who don't print until they MANUALLY remap to LittleBadServer. This is an emergency, because 90% of our users click randomly as soon as anything unexpected happens. We've considered drop-in server aliases, scripting, registry changes, mapping both printers, and all sorts of stupid things (I even poked around in file replication dynamic paths) that would be solved if we could simply:
Modify some link in AD to point SomePrinterPointerObject to LittleBadServer\Share, instead of futzing with "\\Server\Share" at the CLIENT.
Clients are mostly Win98 with ADSI, handful of 2K Pro, a few XP. Presently two DC's, and one, ah, forest. This seems so basic, and I think semi-automatic scripting is the only "free" solution we have. Any thoughts?