Sanity check: Print Server upgrade
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@Breffni-Potter said:
I'd say 2 hours at a minimum, 2 hours of "I can't print anymore"
4 hours of engineer time at maximum even with all the snags in the world. 1 hour if everything goes off without a hitch.
Thanks.
Would anyone else like to give me a time for this? I'm looking for some consensus.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
If you have your OUs setup by location and department (as the norm) you should just be deploy the printers in GPOs within that OU.
Cool. But don't I apply the AD group to the OU?
No, How would you do that? Users, groups and computers can be in an OU. The OU is just a folder really.
I'm probably showing my ignorance here. Can I just create a GPO called "Accounts Printers" and then add the "Accounts" AD security group under security filtering? Or is that a dumbass way of proceeding?
That's what I do... not sure if it is the right way or not.
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Another quick question as I really don't know how print servers work. My vendor has expressed concerns about printer compatibility with Server 2012r2. Possibly naively, I had assumed that it was the OS of the client that was the key, not the server? This is because I thought it was the client that installed the printer driver, and the server really just acted as a driver repository, as well as performing queue management etc etc.
If anything, I'd assumed that we would have less issues with 2012r2 than 2003, since it's 64-bit and all our clients are Windows 7. 2012R2 and Windows 7 will be using the same drivers won't they?
If anyone has any links to a good read on how a printer server actually works, or can give me a really basic overview, I'd be really grateful.
I still want to know how long you think this project would take you btw
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Another quick question as I really don't know how print servers work. My vendor has expressed concerns about printer compatibility with Server 2012r2. Possibly naively, I had assumed that it was the OS of the client that was the key, not the server? This is because I thought it was the client that installed the printer driver, and the server really just acted as a driver repository, as well as performing queue management etc etc.
If anything, I'd assumed that we would have less issues with 2012r2 than 2003, since it's 64-bit and all our clients are Windows 7. 2012R2 and Windows 7 will be using the same drivers won't they?
That seems like a silly distinction... you can deploy both 64-bit and 32-bit drivers with the print server. If the drivers work on Windows 8/8.1 or even Windows 7 they will work on Server 2012r2.
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Well that's what I thought. But they're saying differently.
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Well, you can prove it one simple way - install the printer on the 2012R2 server, which as @coliver says, should work assuming those other things.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
If you have your OUs setup by location and department (as the norm) you should just be deploy the printers in GPOs within that OU.
Cool. But don't I apply the AD group to the OU?
No, How would you do that? Users, groups and computers can be in an OU. The OU is just a folder really.
I'm probably showing my ignorance here. Can I just create a GPO called "Accounts Printers" and then add the "Accounts" AD security group under security filtering? Or is that a dumbass way of proceeding?
Looks like how I'd do it as well.
As for how long it should take, I'd guesstimate it would be around 6 hours or less to give you 4+ of troubleshooting. If all goes well, one should be able to create 15 security groups and 1 GPO with 15 printers in under 1 hour, assuming all of the needed info/drivers are already available. Assuming you don't want to pay the consultants to download the drivers, you should do that first.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
If anything, I'd assumed that we would have less issues with 2012r2 than 2003, since it's 64-bit and all our clients are Windows 7. 2012R2 and Windows 7 will be using the same drivers won't they?
If anyone has any links to a good read on how a printer server actually works, or can give me a really basic overview, I'd be really grateful.
Anyone? Googling over my lunch hour, I'm guessing that it depends on whether you tick the box "Render the print jobs on client computers". If ticked, the Windows 7 client will render the document and send the RAW file to the print server. So the print server just sends the file to the printer - there is no driver issue. But if unticked, the server will render the file using the driver that it has installed. So if there is a different driver on the client and the server, I guess you could have issues?
It seems that the default should always be to render the jobs on the client though, which keeps things simple.
I can't change this setting on my existing 2003 server anyway, because it's not a supported feature of 2003. Yet when I look on the clients, this setting is ticked.
I find it all a bit confusing and this is exactly why I wanted to outsource the job. I really don't want to be learning about print servers during my lunch break. But in the words of Al Pacino:
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@Dashrender said:
If all goes well, one should be able to create 15 security groups and 1 GPO with 15 printers in under 1 hour, assuming all of the needed info/drivers are already available. Assuming you don't want to pay the consultants to download the drivers, you should do that first.
The tricky bit is, they might be looking to stack up the hours, so I suspect they will fight/argue about it tooth and nail to raise the hours. I would hesitate to assume a printer vendor carries IT professionals whose goal is to swoop in, do the job, swoop out rapidly.
@Carnival-Boy said:
Another quick question as I really don't know how print servers work. My vendor has expressed concerns about printer compatibility with Server 2012r2.
Could be valid here. How old are the printers? If they were bought during the XP era then you might have a problem. If they are newer than that, then you should be absolutely fine.
When they "expressed concerns" what does that mean in reality? Did they tell you:
A) You need to buy new printers
B.) This job will take longer for us, therefore pay us more.
C) We think we can do it BUT there might be issues, we've not done printers to 2012R2 before.It could be...you need to just bypass the printer vendor and look for a UK IT consultant to just swing in and do it, this should be dead easy to do.
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They're not printer vendors, they're "IT Solutions Specialists".
They've quoted 3 to 4 days.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
They're not printer vendors, they're "IT Solutions Specialists".
They've quoted 3 to 4 days.
Would you mind private messaging me who they are?
I can do much much bigger projects which would take 3-4 days. They sound very special.
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Something seems very wrong here. Either you have left out a very big important piece of the puzzle or they are hideously over-quoting you.
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I can't think of anything I've missed. It has been bothering me all weekend. Hence the reason I've started a thread on it!
They've already spent 4 hours on-site preparing a statement of works. I'm confused as to why that took so long.
From the outset, I thought it would take a day, at most.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
They've already spent 4 hours on-site preparing a statement of works. I'm confused as to why that took so long.
With respect, sounds like they are taking you for a ride. Like...they should have done the entire job in 4 hours.
Have you signed anything yet? -
@Breffni-Potter said:
Have you signed anything yet?
Hell, no.
It's not a case of taking me for a ride. I've used them for years and been relatively satisfied, and they know I'm pretty experienced generally - even if I'm a crap at printers.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I can't think of anything I've missed. It has been bothering me all weekend. Hence the reason I've started a thread on it!
They've already spent 4 hours on-site preparing a statement of works. I'm confused as to why that took so long.
From the outset, I thought it would take a day, at most.
I worked for a consulting/MSP a while ago where an employee there had no idea what he was doing, tried installing a network printer, after 2 days (16 billable hours), he recruited another tech to help out billing at double rate for another day, plus. Even after that, a third tech was called in, who did finally get the new printer working in about 1 hour. Unbelievably the techs submitted 40 hours of billable time to the customer to install this printer.
Rightfully so, the customer called a meeting with our company and refused to pay 5 times or more as much for installation as the cost of the printer.
I'm guessing they have no idea how to do what you want, and they are going to charge you for their education as well as the service.
You already sound like you know how to do this, I'd skip the outside support.
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I have had installation engineers from printer vendors who are really hopeless and I've ended up doing the driver installations myself because they were so clueless. In their defence, they were basically photocopier repairmen, not Windows techs, but their employers makes them doing work they're not trained for. They're fantastic when it comes to a paper jam.
That's not the case here though. I've been scratching my head a bit.
@Dashrender said:
I'm guessing they have no idea how to do what you want, and they are going to charge you for their education as well as the service.
I'm guessing that too.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I have had installation engineers from printer vendors ...
Installation engineer - LOL thanks, I needed that.
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@Dashrender said:
I'm guessing they have no idea how to do what you want, and they are going to charge you for their education as well as the service.
Which for really special cases they should. Internal IT always charges for that, MSPs do it far less, but it still has to come somewhere. At the end of the day, clients are the only source of revenue so all education is paid for by the clients. There is just more chance of spreading it out over lots of clients rather than all being paid for by one.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
I'm guessing they have no idea how to do what you want, and they are going to charge you for their education as well as the service.
Which for really special cases they should. Internal IT always charges for that, MSPs do it far less, but it still has to come somewhere. At the end of the day, clients are the only source of revenue so all education is paid for by the clients. There is just more chance of spreading it out over lots of clients rather than all being paid for by one.
So are you saying this is a case where he should be paying them for 3-4 days so they learn how to do this?
If it were my company (the MSP) I'd make my guys do this in our own lab so they understand the process, then go and bill the client the more normal time for a service like this. MSPs are paid $150+/hr because they already know how to do these things, they already spent the money on training and that cost is being spread out over many clients through the higher than hourly cost of the tech, but lower than all of the time learning said skill for the tech.
