Thursday, June 23, 2011

Migrating Windows Print Server – Part 1 of 2

Now that I have my new Windows print server which is a virtual machine ready, it is time to migrate printers from the old Windows print server to the new one.

My old print server is running on Windows Server 2003 R2 (32 bit) while the new one is running Windows Server 2008 (32 bit).  Windows Server 2008 Print Management tool comes in very handy in this migration.  It allows me to migrate my 100+ printers from the old print server to the new one although I need to manually recreate a few because of out-dated printer drivers.

The Print Management will be installed when the “Print Services” role is added.

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Using the Print Management to migrate printers is really straightforward.

Add the old print server and the new print server to the Print Management.

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After adding both the old and new print servers, export printers from the old server to a file.

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With the export file ready, I just need to import it to my new server.

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After the import has completed, the list of imported printers will appear when the “Printers” node has been selected.  Always compare the list of printers under the new and old servers which I did.  I found a few printers failed to import because of drivers mismatched.  I have to download the new drivers and manual create those missing printers.  Nevertheless this tool really saves me a lot time.

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