Printing nightmare in Horizon View 7

[DanVM99]

Can anyone shed any light onto our current printing position?

We're building up our HV7 Test environment with Win7 32bit Gold Image in the hope of going live later this year in Production.

When looking at our printing options we can't seem to find a suitable solution.

Our existing printing infrastructure consists of a single Windows print server that has 100 or so printers shared out via UNC path. We currently use Group Policy to install printers targetting users by the appropriate OU and security groups they're in. For some reason this process does not work within our VMs. I have tested placing the machines in the same OU as our physical machines and run a GPResult which shows the printer policies are supposedly being applied successfully - but no group policy printers to be found anywhere inside our virtual desktops and no trace of any GP issues in Event Viewer. 

We're hoping to go live with some kind of a thin/zero client device that will NOT be running Windows IOT/embedded though this is currently dependent on Microsoft's upcoming development of a suitable Skype for Business plugin to offload VOIP audio to a non Windows based client. Therefore VMware's client printer redirection is not an option for us as this depends upon a Windows based client device.

The next option is to use Location Based Printing with the ThinPrint feature of Horizon. From my reading of the implementation guidance though it apears that VMware do not support UNC Path printers. All our printers are currently installed and shared out by UNC from our print server. We don't want to use direct printing to IP as we'd lose valuable central management of print drivers such as changing duplex settings and installed options etc centrally.

The next option we considered was manually installing printers into the virtual desktop for each user as we on board them into VDI. Our initial testing seemed to show that Persona Management was retaining connections to these manually added printers across our non persistent linked clones but we later found that this proved unreliable and some printers would persist and other didn't on a seemingly random basis.

We have UEM but haven't started to use it as yet. Does this give us any additonal options in terms of printer deployment? Are there any other ways of skinning this cat that we haven't considered?

Many many thanks in advance for anyone who's managed to make it this far! Apologies for the lengthy post.

[jmacdaddy]

Yeah, been through this many times.  There doesn't seem to be any reason why user based printer deployment via GPO doesn't work consistently on nonpersistent VDI, but it just doesn't.  I don't think I have had a situation where none of the printers are there.  Usually you get a hit or miss deployment, printer by printer.  Also, since the user profile loads before the printers are created for the user, the default printer assigned by the user tends not to stick.

One important thing is to make sure that all the printer drivers have been pre-loaded onto your templates.  Easiest way to do this is to install all of the network printers onto your template and then delete them.  That will ensure that the exact same driver exists on the template as is being used on the print server and then leave you with a clean slate as far as not having actual printer objects installed.

[HendersonD]

Several years ago we started using location based printing using UNC paths and it worked just fine

As you know you must register TPVMGPoACmap.dll in order to open up the spreadsheet still group policy where you specify the particulars about location based printing.

VMWare then upgraded View and released a new version of TPVMGPoACmap.dll which broke location based printing via UNC. I opened a ticket with VMWare and they came to the same conclusion that I did, this new dll did break UNC based location based printing. The license location based printing is licensed by VMWare from ThinPrint, a German company. VMWare told me they would pass this information onto VMWare. I never checked up on it but it is worth opening a ticket with VMWare.

In the end, we just keep using the older version of TPVMGPoACmap.dll and UNC based location based printing works perfect

[Magneet]

what kind of drivers are we talking about? packaged type or non-packaged type because the latter will cause issues with roaming profiles and floating desktops. If you have set the wrong policy setting the popup to accept the driver wil not be shown and the printer won't be added. Even though Microsoft stopt supporting non-packaged drivers since Vista loads of printer suppliers stil only do non-packaged drivers. See Beware of MS KB3170455 with Windows 7 floating desktops – Retouw.nl for some more information. (yes shameless link to my own site, sorry for that)

[HendersonD]

We are an HP shop and use their Universal PCL5 and PCL6 drivers on our print serve. I also load these two drivers into the desktop. This saves them from being downloaded when a printer is added

[DanVM99]

Thanks jmacdaddy.

After playing about with UEM I think we're going to see if there's any mileage in it's printer deployment by AD Group condition feature as despite having the correct underlying drivers in our template we can't seem to get any printers appearting in VMs.

Good idea re adding each printer then deleting it though - I'll remember that one.

[DanVM99]

Thanks Henderson,

That's given me a good insight into the ThinPrint option. Using the older version of that DLL to sustain UNC ptah printers is definitely going to form the basis of my 'Plan B' for printing should UEM fail to come up with the goods.

Lastly, can you tell me which is the latest version of the TPVMGPoACmap.dll file that still appears to work with UNC path printing? We're using View 7. Do I need to grab the DLL from View 6 or perhaps even older?

Thanks