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Creating printing pools

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Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

Creating printing pools

When you create a printer, you can associate it with more than one printing device in order to form a printing pool. To set up a pool, you create a printer and assign it as many output ports as you have identical printing devices. Printing pools have the following characteristics:

  • All devices in the pool share the same print property settings and act as a single unit. For example, stopping one device pauses them all.

  • Print destinations can be of the same type or mixed (serial, parallel, and network).

  • When a job arrives for the printing pool, the spooler on the computer running Services for Macintosh checks the destinations to see which device is idle. The first port selected gets checked first, the second port second, and so on. If your pool consists of a different type of port, make sure you select the fastest port first (network, then parallel, and then serial).

  • A printing pool can contain a mixture of printer interface types, but the printing devices must all use the same printer driver.

Note

  • Print Server for Macintosh is not available on the 64-bit versions of the Windows operating systems.