Shared Printer on Server

[BAR549]

New Job - different ideas. At my current work, when we get a new network printer, they add the printer it as a share on a server (using the ip address). They say the advantage is that you don't have to load the driver on each PC that way.

Previously we had always just set the printer up and on the workstation pointed it to the IP address.

Is there any resource pull on the server by adding the share? Is there an advantage of doing it one way as opposed to another.

Thanks for any help@

 

[Spirit]

The printer should have its OWN network card and probably static IP address, you should then add it and share it from the server.

Adv.
Centralised Managment
Control permissions
Easy access for users to connect to resource

Having to manually do stuff on the workstations rather than a double a printer kind of sounds like well work

 

[Argetlam]

The printer would, indeed, need its own NIC. But that was stated before.
However, static IP is not necessarily the best solution.

The way we solved it is flexible enough for us. We create a reservation on our DHCP for the printer's NIC, making sure that the printer will get the same IP everytime.
The factory-defaults for a printer are always DHCP, so not too much configuration needs to be done on the printer itself.

After that we create the queue on the server. During the creation of the IP-port we point to the DNS-name of the printer rather than its IP-address.
When we need/want to change the IP-address used by the printer, we will only need to change it in the DHCP-settings.

Now about the resource-pull on the server...
Of course it'll take some resources as the spooling of print-jobs is performed centrally on the network.
But it shouldn't create a heavy load on the server.

The statement about the drivers not needed to be loaded locally is partly true.
The drivers are actually still being copied to every connected workstation. This is, however, an automatic job handled by the server when a workstation connects to the shared printer for the first time.
You can publish different drivers for different OS's (Win9x, WinNT4....etc) on the server if you use these OS's on your network and need to print on the shared printer from these workstations and the "normal" driver on the server is not supported on these OS's.

With kind regards,

Argetlam

SysAdmin

 

[nsantin]

I believe the question is setting up the printer as a shared printer on the server vs printing directly to the IP from the workstation.

Both work, however best practices in a domain environment would be the server approach for a number of reasons. The printer drivers are pushed to the client once the printer is connected so you don't need to install any drivers or TCPIP printing software on the machines.

Also, you can centrally mange the print queue in a shared setup, you can configure security, restrict users/times, pause, clear/reset jobs. etc.

Whereas when every users points to the printer directly they are managing their own local print queue.