Kurt Shintaku's Blog

The “Ask the Performance Team” blog posted a VERY good article that I think everyone in IT should take a look at because it involves an issue very near and dear to all of our hearts:  “Print Cluster Performance”

Here’s the first part (of FIVE sections) of the article:

In recent months we have seen an increasing volume of print cluster cases being opened due to poor performance. For example slow failover or spooler crashes. This article is provided as a guide for print server administrators to identify and resolve possible causes of these performance issues.

1. To increase print server stability, only the print drivers that are needed should be installed.   Print drivers should be installed on the cluster print resource.  Print drivers should not be installed on the local physical nodes of the cluster unless it is required by the printer vender.  HP Universal Print Driver and the Xerox Global Print Driver and other Universal print drivers are a few of the print drivers that must be installed on the physical local nodes and on the Cluster print resource. 

   HP universal print driver configuration in clustered environment best practices
   http://h20338.www2.hp.com/Hpsub/downloads/
   HP_Drivers_in_Cluster_Environments.pdf

   From the HP web page above:
   “When installing product specific drivers, it is recommended that the latest driver be used.  The latest version of the driver can be found at hp.com. Also, the driver should be
   installed onto every node in the cluster prior to being installed onto the Virtual Print Server”

   Xerox installation document:
   http://download.support.xerox.com/pub/docs/GLOBALPRINTDRIVER/userdocs

   You will need an account with Xerox to access the link above and obtain the documentation referenced below.

   “The X-GPD must be installed on the each node prior to being installed on the client”

Read the full post here:

• INFO:  Windows Print Cluster Best Practices for Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2008 R2
  http://blogs.technet.com/b/askperf/archive/2010/11/12/windows-print-cluster-best-practices-for-windows-server-2003-to-windows-server-2008-r2.aspx