Sams Teach Yourself MCSE Windows NT Server 4 in 14 Days
(Publisher: Macmillan Computer Publishing)
Author(s): David Schaer, et al
ISBN: 0672311283
Publication Date: 12/15/97

8.8.3. Enabling Printer Pooling

Printer pooling enables an administrator to configure a single printer to send print jobs to multiple print devices. The ports selected can be made up of a combination of local and network print devices or exclusively a single type as in Figure 8.16.

The print devices are not required to be identical; however, they must support the same print driver. For example, an administrator could combine both Hewlett-Packard and Epson printers into a printer pool provided that they support the same print driver.

Figure 8.16.  Printer pooling has been enabled. The printer can send to either LPT1 or COM1.

The printer devices should be located in close physical proximity to one another because the user controls only which printer to print to, not which print device will be used to service the print job.

By establishing a printer pool an administrator can make better use of available resources. An automatic rollover to the next print device in the pool will occur when the first one is busy or unavailable.

8.8.4. Installing a Print Driver

The print driver determines the escape code sequence used to initialize the print device and control additional print functions. Each supported printer will come with an NT 4.0 print driver. The example in Figure 8.17 shows the HP LaserJet 5Si selected as the print driver.

Figure 8.17.  The HP LaserJet 5Si is selected as the print driver.

If the print driver is not shown in the default list of print drivers that comes with NT Server 4.0 you can add additional drivers at this time.

You cannot use print drivers from NT 3.x with NT 4.0.

You can find a list of supported print drivers on the NT 4.0 Server HCL. Remember that when installing a driver for a printer pool it is important to select a driver that can be understood by all the print devices.

If the printer is configured as a shared printer you must then determine which network clients will be accessing the printer. NT provides a slight-of-hand style method of installing print drivers for the clients. In the case of NT and Windows 95 clients the NT print server can pass back the appropriate driver for the client’s operating system transparently to the user. On an Intel-based Windows NT 4.0 client the driver will be installed in \%Winroot%\system32\spool\drivers\w32x86.

In the example in Figure 8.18 the printer is configured with drivers for both Windows 95 and NT 4.0 DEC Alpha systems. These are, of course, in addition to the driver for Intel-based NT 4.0 machines because that is the operating system of the print server.

Figure 8.18.  Additional drivers for Windows 95 and NT 4.0 for the Alpha platform are selected.

The administrator should install the print drivers only on the print server, not on the client’s machines. Multiple clients and platforms are supported.

The installation of multiple drivers is an issue only when the computer will be used as a print server and provide services to other than Intel-based NT 4.0 clients. As can be noted in Figure 8.18, the printer has been shared as HPLaserJ. Sharing the printer is what designates a computer as a print server.

8.9. Connecting to a Shared Printer

You can connect to a shared printer in several ways: from the Add Printer Wizard, Network Neighborhood, and from the command prompt. Each of the methods has the same end result: printing is directed from the client computer to the shared printer. The connection can be identified either by a UNC connection, such as \\NTMASTER\HPLaserJ or a redirected logical device name, such as LPT1 or COM1.

8.9.1. Printer Security

Access to the printer is controlled by NT security mechanisms. You rarely would attempt to control access to a print device on a user’s local system; this is normally reserved for shared network devices. The default permissions assigned on an NT printer are shown in Figure 8.19. Notice that by default everyone can print.

Figure 8.19.  The default permissions assigned to a printer.

Notice the use of the special group CREATOR OWNER. Although Everyone can print, users become the CREATOR OWNER only of their own print jobs. This enables a user to manage his own print jobs but not those belonging to others unless they have been assigned additional permissions.

Total managerial control of the printer and all print jobs is granted initially only to Administrators, Server Operators, and Print Operators. The administrator can control a user’s access individually to the printer by assigning any of the following rights: No Access, Print, Manage Documents, and Full Control. As is the case with security throughout NT, the No Access permission will nullify any other permission to the resource whether received individually or by group membership.

8.9.2. Managing Shared Printer Properties

When sharing a printer on a network, the settings applied to the printer properties can have a serious impact on the functionality and availability of the printer.

Scheduling Printer Availability

The hours of the day that a printer services documents can be controlled through scheduling. The range of hours does not control the hours that the user can send jobs to the printer but rather the hours that the printer will service the submitted jobs.

One common implementation of the scheduling feature is to create two printers that point to the same print device. One printer would be scheduled to be serviced 8a.m.–5p.m. and the other from 5p.m.–8a.m. Large jobs such as batch reports could be directed by the user to the printer to be serviced at night (see Figure 8.20).

Figure 8.20.  The printer properties page is used to control printer settings, including scheduling and priority.

This method provides excellent availability of the printer during the day for more time-critical jobs. Users must make the decision of which printer to direct the jobs to.

Setting Printer Priority

By setting the printer priority it is possible to adjust the default priority assigned to jobs being serviced by the printer. This setting can be used when several printers point to the same physical print device. Based upon which printer the users submit their jobs to, the level of preference given to those jobs in the print order will be determined.