PS 4.5 Basic printing question (Driver mapping)

[XRJoe]

We have a PS4.5 farm and we imported our Windows 2003 print server. Users print to Session Printers. Could we do driver mapping or use the Universal Print Driver if we are not auto-creating client printers or mapping client printers?

 

[Drakujii]

If you have imported the print server in your farm, just create policies in Citrix Presentation Console and assign your printer from there. You don't have to add drivers this way.

ciao
Fred

Fred

You have only one life, enjoy it !!!

 

[XRJoe]

We have the Session Printers policy configured to assign printers to user groups. And the printers are imported from our Windows 2003 print server. Are you saying we should be able to configure the policies to use the Universal Print driver?

Currently the citrix admin is running a script, and occasionally using Driver Replication, to install and copy drivers across all citrix servers. I do not think this is necessary but he insists it is. I'm not out to prove him wrong but we are having problems with drivers and want it resolved.

 

[XRJoe]

Apparently the short answer is: No, Session Printers do not work with the UPD in Presentation Server 4 and 4.5.

http://support.citrix.com/article/ctx111308

 

[lsharkey]

Hi, XRJoe,
There's a really good article here that may answer more of your questions regarding driver replication "bad" print drivers. As is indicated in the article you referenced, if you import network printers, you have to install the drivers on the Terminal Servers. If you are going to have to do that, you should also check out Citrix' StressPrinters tool so you can test the drivers before installing in production.
These are two really good articles regarding printing in TS environments:

http://www.msterminalservices.org/articles/hunt-bad-printer-driver.html

http://www.msterminalservices.org/articles/Managing-Printer-Drivers.html

This is the StressPrinters download page.

http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX109374

This is an excellent article by Thomas Koetzing that explains how to use the StressPrinters tool. It gives you some really good info and background that isn't on Citrix' download page:

http://www.thomaskoetzing.de/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=243&Itemid=274

 

[XRJoe]

Thanks for the reply, I have been doing a lot of digging into Citrix printing (also got my CCA for PS4.5) and have came across the SressPrinters utility. I think we are going to move away from Session Printing actually. The plan is to distribute printers via group policy and enable client printing so we can utilize the UDP in 4.5 or at the very least use driver mapping to native drivers.

This issue came about when I was given the project to build a new print server cluster because the old print server was "dying". After building the server and migrating the printers, the current citrix admin ran a script (NOT the print server import or driver replication in PS)which would install all the printers from the windows print server to all 200+ citrix servers which included about 80 non-native drivers. At this point it dawned on me that the supposed problems they were experiencing with the old print server were probably driver issues on the citrix servers.

Sure enough when we went live with the new print server we began experiencing similar problems. Citrix users could not see certain printers or could not click the grayed out print button and each of these issues was traced back to problems with drivers on citrix servers or improperly configured citrix servers. The Windows print server has been solid as a rock since we went live and finally separated the citrix printing issues from windows printing issues. This is an interesting environment to say the least but I think we are making progress and getting everyone on the same page finally.

 

[XRJoe]

P.S. Thank you for the articles regarding TS printing and driver management, they are very good reading!