Speaker
Michal Kwiatek
(CERN)
Description
For many years at CERN we had a very sophisticated print server infrastructure
which supported several different protocols (AppleTalk, IPX and TCP/IP ) and
many different printing standards. Today’s situation differs a lot: we have much
more homogenous network infrastructure, where TCP/IP is used everywhere
and we have less printer models, which almost all work with current standards
(i.e. they all provide PostScript drivers). This change gave us a possibility to
review the current printing architecture aiming in simplification of the
infrastructure we have and in full automation of the service.
The new infrastructure offer both LPD service exposing print queues to Linux
and Mac OS X computers and native printing for Windows based clients. The
printer driver distribution is automatic and native on Windows and is
automated by custom mechanisms on UNIX, where the appropriate Foomatic
drivers are configured. Also the process of a printer registration and queue
creation is completely automated following the printer registration in the
network database.
At the end of 2006 we have migrated all (1100+) CERN printers and all user’s
connections at CERN to the new service. The talk will describe a new
architecture and summarize process of migration.
Primary author
Rafal Otto
(CERN)
Co-authors
Juraj Sucik
(CERN)
Michal Kwiatek
(CERN)