The closest thing is going to be Windows Failover Clustering - we have it with 2008 R2, and I'm sure it's likely similar with 2012 R2. Our two backend servers have individual names, but the print server is a shared resource name that fails over between the nodes. Thankfully that isn't the print server I'm upgrading this summer (yet...)
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Melvin Backus Sent: Monday, April 21, 2014 12:31 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [NTSysADM] RE: Print Drivers - v3 vs v4 With Server 2012r2 Print Server and Windows 7 Clients Since we're on this topic, (and not to hijack the thread, it seems sort related) :) , is there a print equivalent to DFS which would make the target server transparent to the user? (Or is that what the 'point & print' is supposed to do? -- There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't. From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Aakash Shah Sent: Monday, April 21, 2014 3:06 PM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: [NTSysADM] RE: Print Drivers - v3 vs v4 With Server 2012r2 Print Server and Windows 7 Clients For the server that I set up this weekend, I ended up using the v4/Class built in drivers for the Brother MFC units. There was a Dell printer that did not appear to have Class drivers, so I used a v3 driver for that. Testing appeared to work over the weekend, but we will see if any problems crop up in the coming days/weeks. I'm still interested in hearing if anyone else has any positive or negative experience with the v4/Class drivers (either built in or model specific drivers) with Win7 clients (and Win8 too). >From some reading I did, some Class drivers sometimes do not offer all of the >functionality that the v3 drivers do, and so there may be cases where the v3 >drivers are needed: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/80e00b43-0945-40ff-be18-68b6f7f2ac5b/server-2012-ms-class-drivers-for-printing-no-envelope-feeders?forum=winserverprint Xerox appears to have a nice matrix that indicates what specific Class driver is supported by each of their units: http://download.support.xerox.com/pub/drivers/Compatibility_Matrix/other/win8/en/Windows8_Matrix.pdf However, Windows detected the appropriate Class driver for the few printers I set up, so this was not neccessary. -Aakash Shah From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Miller Bonnie L. Sent: Monday, April 21, 2014 10:06 AM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: [NTSysADM] RE: Print Drivers - v3 vs v4 With Server 2012r2 Print Server and Windows 7 Clients I'm also interested in what you find on this, even if there are no replies here, as I will be replacing a WS08 R2 SP1 print server with WS12R2 this summer. Same scenario, the server will be serving mostly Win7 clients for a while, but also some 8.1. From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Aakash Shah Sent: Sunday, April 20, 2014 3:44 PM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: [NTSysADM] Print Drivers - v3 vs v4 With Server 2012r2 Print Server and Windows 7 Clients I am setting up a new Server 2012r2 print server. All of the clients on the network are currently Windows 7. Is anyone using the newer v4 print drivers, or are people still installing the legacy v3 drivers? For anyone using the newer v4 print drivers, has anyone experienced any problems with Windows 7 clients when using the Microsoft enhanced Point and Print compatibility driver (this is what Windows 7 appears to use by default when connecting to a printer share from a Server 2012r2 server that uses a v4 print driver)? Thanks, -Aakash Shah
