Slow Printing on Windows 2003 SP2 cluster

[chrisukcov]

Hi.

We have a print server on a cluster. Printing was ok for a week then went very sluggish and slow. Found teh exact MS article which states was fixed in SP2. We upgraded straight from SP0 to SP2 and that didnt fix the problem... now MS want to charge

Any ideas!?!?!

Chris

 

[mrdenny]

What happens if you connect directly to the active node and try to print to it?

Sounds to me like possible the network port(s) have switches from full duplex to half duplex. Do you have the ports statically set, or are they set to auto?

Denny
MCSA (2003) / MCDBA (SQL 2000)
MCTS (SQL 2005 / Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0: Configuration / Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007: Configuration)
MCITP Database Administrator (SQL 2005) / Database Developer (SQL 2005)

--Anything is possible. All it takes is a little research. (Me)

http://www.mrdenny.com

 

[chrisukcov]

HI.

THANKS FOR THE REPLY. ONE OF MY CHAPS WE JUST GOING TO DO SOME MORE TESTING BEFORE THE REPLY BUT HES HAD TO LEAVE, SO ILL LET YOU KNOW THE LATEST AS I KNOW IT.

PORTS SET TO AUTO.

I THINK HE SET A PRINTER UP ON THE ACTIVE NODE AND TRIED TO PRINT AND WAS OK (GUESS)

COULD IF BE DRIVER VERSIONS AND THE SERVER VERSION BEING MORE UP TO DATE THAN THE CLIENT?!? WE HAD A FRESH WINDOWS 200 MACHINE AND ADDED THE PRINTER ON THRU \\SERVERNAME AND IT PRINTED FINE WITH NO HANGS TO A PRINTER THAT OTHERS ARE HAVING SLOWDOWN ISSUES WITH....


CHRIS

 

[mrdenny]

Easy on the yelling.

Could be a drive issue. Did he use the same driver version when printing on the node?

Let us know what the test results end up being.

Denny
MCSA (2003) / MCDBA (SQL 2000)
MCTS (SQL 2005 / Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0: Configuration / Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007: Configuration)
MCITP Database Administrator (SQL 2005) / Database Developer (SQL 2005)

--Anything is possible. All it takes is a little research. (Me)

http://www.mrdenny.com

 

[Kuskaya]

Hi Chrisukcov,

it is normal if MS wants to charge because on a print cluster only MS In-Box drivers are supported and nothing else.

I thing you have many 3 rd party print drivers with 3 rd party Language Monitors.

The slow performance can have different reason.You should check the mentioned below points.

1) The drivers should only installed on the virtual print server.

2) Go to start > Settings > Printer and Faxes > Server Properties and check if some drivers are installed locally on the nodes.

3) If you ever printed test pages from the nodes you will have many local installed printer drivers.Because if you print a test page the driver will be pushed via point and print.

4) This means all the drivers in you local spool folder exist twice.

5) Every time the spooler service starts it uploads the whole spool folder into the spooler folder.The dll's will then exist in you spool folder twice with different paths.

6) This is on of the reason.

7) The second reason if you use on your print cluster 3 rd party print monitors your cliens will have this also.

8) If the clients starts his PC his print monitor will try to connect to the print monitor on the print cluster.And if you have in example 500 users the spooler will try to give a status update to the whole clients.The performance will decrease and a hang can occur.

9) These are the most common reason why the spooler performance is slow on print servers therefore 3 rd party printer drivers are not supported in clustered environment.

10) It is not easy to clean the language monitors on a print cluster and client pc's.

11) I know that PS2 includes important fixes that has solved many problems.With SP2 in example the spooler router was fixed.Before SP2 this was also on of the biggest problems that has decreased the print cluster performance.

Regards,
Cengiz Kuskaya