[THIN] Re: fault tolerance print servers

We are migrating our print servers into VMware at the moment, so if I can move it onto a cluster I will. I need a clustered web server anyway, so two birds one stone as far as I can see.....

2008/6/9 Berny Stapleton <berny@technology.net.au>:

Sorry to reply to my own post, but seeing Chad's post, that's what it was using, NLB under NT4. Point and print didn't work with that, it always prompted for drivers, same as Novell back in those days.

2008/6/9 Berny Stapleton <berny@technology.net.au>:

I know this is an old question, but I haven't looked at it in that long.

Did they get point and print working? It used to be (Under NT4) that you could create a highly available print cluster but point and print didn't work. I simply just haven't clustered a print server for that long and I don't have a test cluster to play with at the second.

Berny

2008/6/9 Adam Thompson <adwulf@gmail.com>:

2008/6/9 Greg Reese <gareese@gmail.com>:

> you could build two servers and build the same queues on each one.  Then use
> an alias in DNS to point the users to one or the other.  Should the main one
> fail, change the alias in DNS to the other one and clients should keep
> working.  it's not automatic unless you do some clever monitoring and
> scripting.  And you might lose a couple print jobs in the tranisition during
> a failure.
>
> there's a few holes in this but it is basic and easy.
>

You'll need to disable strictnamechecking to do this.
Then assign a CNAME which can point to either server (eg PRINTSERV),
point it at your preferred server initially (eg SERV1)

Now, you need to have something which detects when the node has died,
and runs something like dnscmd.exe /RecordDelete and dnscmd.exe
/RecordAdd to modify the CNAME.

It won't be instantaneous, as you'll have to wait for DNS to replicate
around.  Also, all the jobs in the queue will appear to be lost, and
you still have the problems of client DNS cache and what happens when
the nodes can talk to the dns server but not each other (possibly
worked around with a heartbeat NIC).

Much simpler, if you have W2k or later to take a look at:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/b/a/5bae5aa4-674f-42fb-b8cd-49e26bd29549/clusterfp.doc
Creating Highly Available File and Printer Shares with Windows 2000
Cluster Service

or

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/techinfo/overview/availableprinter.mspx
Creating and Configuring a Highly Available Print Server Under
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Using a Server Cluster

--
AdamT
"At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents
do not cease to be insipid." - Nietzsche

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