Forum Discussion

vrivoire_97090's avatar
vrivoire_97090
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Oct 29, 2008

MS Print servers

Hi all,

 

 

I am planning to use my new F5 LTM to load balance Windows Server 2003 print servers. For the moment, it doesn't work for me: I can see the shared printer but I can't map it.

 

 

Has anayone already "played" with LTM & MS print servers ?

 

 

Thanks,

 

 

Vincent

 

  • Here's the new link to the guide for creating the WMI monitor. As I recall it was pretty straightforward. I'm even using the same interval and timeout. Looking at my monitor properties, the only thing I see that is different is my alias service port is 3389 and the external program path is /usr/bin/monitors. Also, you'll need to enable remote WMI requests on the win2k8 boxes if not already enabled.

     

    Monitoring WMI Services from Big-IP

     

  • Something interesting I found yesterday while trying to get our Optio app printing to the 2008 print server VS, the print jobs were erroring out with an error code 5. This is indicative of a permissions issue. Per Optio, the fix for 2003 server is to change local security policy to allow everyone permissions to apply to anonymous as the jobs are created by the system account on the Optio server and are treated as anonymous by the remote print server. This fix wasn't working in 2008 and Optio support was at a loss. After a bit of digging I found that you must also edit the "named pipes that can be accessed anonymously" local security policy to include SPOOLSS. After making this change, the jobs started printing successfully.

     

    I hope someone may find this info useful as I wasn't finding much myself while trying to figure this out.

     

    Chris

     

  • Here's another print problem I've been noodling on for the last couple days and just figured out. Anonymous jobs going to zebra print queues (on 2008 R2) would spool, but not print. Anonymous has access to spoolss, so what could be the problem? It turned out to be driver isolation. With driver isolation enabled the drivers run in their own protected process, not the spooler process. I disabled driver isolation for the problematic driver and anonymous jobs started printing. That was an interesting one.

     

    • rduque481's avatar
      rduque481
      Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus

      Chris,

       

      Is there anyway you can send me some screenshots of the settings on your VS ? I see a couple of replies back that Brian Mayer says he just did a standard vs with snat, but id also like to do the same thing with priority groups, even though I'm not sure how to do this so if you or Brian can help me with the priority group settings. also if you provide me with the wmi string you used to monitor the servers it would be much appreciated.

       

  • Hello everyone,

     

    I am struggling to get a 2016 MS Print Server to sit behind the F5.

     

    I have followed a number of different threads and posts from multiple load balancing sites, but have yet to come to the proper solution. In our environment, we need to be able to map to the individual printers. I am able to get the configuration as far as being able to start mapping a printer \\printserver\printername but when I click next, I just get an error. And if I click browse, there are no printers to select.

     

    I have done multiple registry changes, enabled and disabled NetBios, and a bunch of other things. I am hoping that there is someone here who might be able to further assist me with this project.

     

    Thanks!

    • Anonymous25's avatar
      Anonymous25
      Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus

      As an additional update, it does not matter if I use the NPath iApp or build a virtual server. If I map to the printer directly through the print server, I have no issues, when trying to map through the F5, either via NPath or virtual server, I get an error on the Print Server using Wireshark stating, OpenprinterEx reponse, invalid printer name. it doesn't matter if I add it through the VIP or DNS name, I always get this issue.

       

      Thanks.

      • Andrew_Husking's avatar
        Andrew_Husking
        Icon for Cirrus rankCirrus

        Are you able to share some of your VIP config? Once we made the registry changes everything worked nicely for us.