Print Servers

[rbeaugrand]

Hi,

we are planning to migrate all our Print Servers using universal drivers. We will install three print servers with 900 printers each on win2k3 rc2.

My questions are :

Has anyone tried this kind of installation on VMs yet ?

Should I have any concerns or issues with placing a Print Servers inside VMs ?

thanks,

Rom.

[Curdasss]

We are running our print server as a VM and have no issue's with it.

[rbeaugrand]

Hi Curdasss,

Thank you for your response,

can you please tell me how many printers you have installed on this server and what OS you are using.

Rom.

[doubleH]

i'm runing my file/printer server in a vm with no issues although i only have 74 printers and not 900! we are running windows server 2003 sp2.

[Curdasss]

We are running Windows 2000 and have 62 printers installed. Not even close to your 900, but if you make sure you have enough resources on your ESX servers you should be fine with that many.

[TomHowarth]

I'm running a win2k3 r2 print server just running PCL5e for a large national Legal firm and printing is very high on their agenda as you can guess, I am happy to say that the users are saying that printing is even quicker than before.

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Kind Regards

Tom,

[mstahl75]

Were are running a print server on Windows 2003 R2 with a little over 300 printers and haven't noticed any problem that can be attributed to the server being a VM.

[rbeaugrand]

HI,

Thank you for your responses.

Tom can you please tell me the number of printers installed on this VM, and the amount of RAM/CPU you attributed to it.

mstahl75 can you tell me the amount of RAM/CPU you attributed to that VM.

And when you tell "haven't noticed any problem that can be attributed to the server being a VM" does it mean that you noticed problems with this configuration in Win2k3 ?

Thanks

Rom.

[mstahl75 · Accepted solution]

We are currently running with only 256 MB of RAM, 1 vCPU, and nothing special in CPU reservations or shares.

The only problem I've had is a problem with some Lexmark drivers causing 100% CPU loads. We haven't pinned down the exact cause at this point but I'm pretty confident it has nothing to do with the fact the machine is a VM.