1. Print Services

2. Objectives Understand Print Server terms and concepts
Understand how printing works
Print Server Considerations
Printer Hardware Considerations
Install Print Server
Install Local Printer
Install Network Connected Printer

3. Objectives Connection to a Shared Printer at Client
Deploying Printers using Group Policies
Deploying Printers using scripts
Point and Print Functionality
Use Print Management to Manage multiple print servers
Use Print Management to move printers and their queues

4. Print Server
A device which manages communication between the printer and the print clients
In most cases a printer server is a computer running the Windows OS
Windows OS functioning as Print Server provides many services:
Provides drivers to clients (v3)
Stores documents that are spooled for printing
Maintains associated print queue
Provides security and auditing of printer access

5. V3 Printer Drivers Two main data types for print drivers
Enhanced metafile format (EMF)
Uses Printer Control Language (PCL)
EMF documents are sent to print server with minimal processing and then further processed on the print server
RAW
RAW is most commonly used with PostScript page description language.
RAW documents are fully processed on client before being sent to print server and aren’t modified by print server

6. Standard EMF Printing Process

7. Standard RAW Printing Process

8. V4 Printer Drivers Available beginning with Windows 8 and Server 2012
If a printer share is configured with a V4 Printer driver (class drivers), the client does not get the driver from the server.
When connecting to a shared printer that uses a V4 driver, the corresponding V4 driver from the client’s local datastore is installed
Windows 8 & 10 have class drivers, Windows 7 does not.
If the client doesn’t have a driver, a compatibility driver is used
If Windows 7 clients exist on the network, it might be best to still use V3 drivers.

9. V4 Printer Drivers
The v4 printer driver model was designed to make sharing easier and more efficient by eliminating the need to manage drivers across processor architectures.

10. Sizing Print Server Hardware and Optimizing Configuration
Configuration considerations of Print Server:
Operating System
CPU
RAM
Disk Space