Print server setup best practice

Question

We used to locally install hundreds of printers on thousands of computers, and now looking for a way to improve and automate the process as much as possible. A method was suggested to us by another sister company which was to setup print server and AD security groups for each printer and add computer objects to appropriate printer's security group and bind the printer on the print server to the security group with Group Policy. So if you add the computer object in AD to the printer's security group, it'll install on the computer by Group Policy.

The issue with this approach is when you want to remove a printer, you'd have to locally remove the printer from the computer and also remove the computer object from the security group, and if you don't wait for the security group to replicate before locally removing the printer from the computer, Group Policy will add it back again.

So now, what are the other ways that we could consider setting up printers and computers to be seamless and with less management from the Server or Desktop Support teams?

Answer 1

Hi there,

You can then try introducing the role to print management. Print Management is a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in that enables you to install, view, and manage all of the printers in your organization from any computer running Windows Server.

Print Management can help you find printers that have an error condition by using filters. It can also send e-mail notifications or run scripts when a printer or print server needs attention.

You can refer this article https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-server/printing/install-configure-file-print-server

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--If the reply is helpful, please Upvote and Accept it as an answer--