[THIN] Re: Print Server / Citrix design question - urgent

Hi Angela,

 

You aren't going to have an ideal scenario with a pure Citrix solution at this point in time.

 

However you'll get the smallest WAN printing payload (and quickest printing) if you make sure that each site has it's own print server. That way you can use UPD only with no additional SMB-based printing traffic. AOpen have a very small PC that's almost identical to a Mac Mini (but black) that makes an excellent unobtrusive print server for remote offices.

 

The one downside to that appraoch is that one person's print job can starve everyone else on that site of WAN bandwidth. That's why a UPD solution that let's you print efficiently outside a Citrix session is so much more valuable.

 

Having a centralized print server is better from the viewpoint of controlling printing bandwidth utilization outside the ICA channel, but if it's not at all ideal in terms of WAN printing payload unless you use a third party UPD solution.

 

Incidentally Provision Network's Print-IT is an excellent solution UPD solution that's quite as good as Thinprint and not nearly as expensive.

 

regards,

 

Rick

 

--
Ulrich Mack
Quest Software
Provision Networks Division

On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 6:30 AM, Angela Smith <angela_smith9@hotmail.com> wrote:

Hi

Im looking at making changes to our existing farm as Printing is not currently setup optimally.  We run Windows 2003 Presentation Server 4 farm with a centralised MS Windos 2003 Print Server.  The Citrix farm and MS Print Server are on the same network.  All our clients are across the WAN on 1Mb frame relay links.  We have several sites that are 100% Citrix with Windows XP clients that are setup with client network printers which are autocreated in Citrix.  We use Citrix universal drivers only (No third party HP drivers used).

Now my question is....  Am I better to use a centralised MS Print Server or should I have a Print Server in each office?  I want to minimise the amount of traffic on the WAN as the links are small and often get saturated.  Ive read numerous documents and am confused now in relation to the best way to setup printing.  I want to minimise WAN traversal as much as possible and I don't want documents spooling over the WAN.  PDF documents can be very big and a 100MB spooled job will take hours to print over a 1MB link.

What do you suggest?  Should I be using Indirect Printing?  Should each site have a MS Print Server? By the way, we do not have budget for THinPrint or ScrewDrivers so I need to make do with Citrix functionality.  Please help as I am out of ideas and am close to removing Citrix all together...

Thanks
Angela

 

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