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Best Practices for Setting Up a Print Server

I'm setting up a new print server that will have around 30-40 print queues. The server will be Windows Server 2003. This will be the sole function of the server. What I'd like to know is what are some tips/best practices for setting up the print server. I've set up plenty of print servers, but always take defaults and don't do any tweaking. But I'm curious if there are some ideas out there on maybe tweaking stuff, like spool file, etc. Anything would be appreciated.

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markpalinux

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Brad Groux

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eejwb003

ASKER

Thanks to both of you so far. I'm going to keep this open a while to see if there are any other tips. The print migrator works great. And good info on the RAM, OS, mirroring, etc. All help is appreciated.

Brad Groux

I have found that creating a separate array for the spooler is great. It protects the server from degraded arrays that for me at least seem to come from Print servers. I seem to lose more drives due to failure on my print servers than any other servers... so having a separate array lets me simply move the spooler to C:\ temporarily if there is an issue, blow the spooler array away, and move the spooler back.

markpalinux

We have 22 printers for an office with 300+ people on a virtual guest under Microsoft Virtual Server, the other virtual guest is a anti-virus server which pushes and monitors workstations. We like having ti be virtual in case we need or want to move it to a different host.

We have never seen printing be an issue performance wise in that setup.

Mark

eejwb003

ASKER

I'm glad you pointed that out. I think I'm going to use VMware to create the print server.

Brad Groux

VMware is great option for print servers, if you have at VM host at your disposal it is certainly worth a look. When building your Windows box in VM I would follow the same steps I mentioned above in configuring it. 12GB for the OS (could go 10GB if you are low on space), 1.5x the memory for the page file and putting the spooler on a separate partition, although I wouldn't make the second partition more than a couple of gigs, otherwise you're just wasting space.

Good luck!

eejwb003

ASKER

Will do. thanks. I'm gonna split points.