The Ten Printing Rules
Q&A
Q: When using 3rd party printer driver what can happen?A: If you are lucky nothing but you might see: print spooler crash, delayed logons, stuck logons or the worst blue screen of death (BSOD) - server crash.
Q: Why only use the Citrix EMF universal printer driver?
A: With Windows Clients, EMF actually uses the local client printer driver with all capabilities.
Q: What about non-Windows (MAC, Linux...) clients?
A: Non-Windows clients cannot use EMF and automatically fall back to a Universal Printer Driver (UPD) based on a color laser printer but will not give all capabilities the client printer driver might have.
Q: Why not use HP Universal Printer Driver?
A: The HP UPD should only be used for network printer mapped to the XenApp Server and only until UPS is released. With HP UPD make sure you use at least version 5.x and printer isolation, since the driver has been buggy in the past
A: As it says, it isolates the printer driver and therefore protects the spooler to crash. So if the driver is buggy, the isolation might fail but the driver will not crash the spooler service.
Q: Why disable Point-To-Print (P2P)?
A: P2P automatically installs printer driver without you really knowing it. That can be very dangerous because you might spread a bad driver to all servers in your farm.
Q: Why should a print server be close to a XenApp server and not located in a branch office over WAN?
A: Especially with Office 2010, printers are "live" enumerated and over a WAN might take a long time. Also the XenApp server would do a RPC call over the WAN to the print server and is very slow and sluggish.
Q: Why avoid PCL6 printer drivers?
A: There is no technical reason but experience from the field has shown the PCL6 driver to cause several issues.
Q: What is the Citrix Universal Print Server (UPS)?
A: It's an upcomming printing component, hopefully released by the end of 2011. In short, UPS has two parts the print server service (you install on the print server) and a client service (UPC) that will be installed on a XenApp server. Now network printer between print server and XenApp will be mapped also with the Citrix EMF and therefore no printer driver on the XenApp server needs to be installed! UPS is high secure, optimized and allows even firewall transversal. UPS uses the Citrix common gateway protocoll (CGP) and the UPC will be incl. in future XenApp releases.
- Since
Presentation Server 4.0 (CPS 4.0) use the Citrix Universal Printer
Driver based on EMF for client printers, especially with Windows
Clients.
User Policy\ICA\Printing\Universal Printing = Use universal printing only- Presentation Server 4.0 Printing Enhancementshttp://support.citrix.com/article/CTX108170
- Client
network printer (network printer connected to the client) should also
be mapped by EMF and the print output should go through the client in
indirect mode.
User Policy\ICA\Client Printers\Direct connections to print server = Disabled - Print server should always be located in the same network as the XenApp server, especially when the printers are in a WAN location, branch office. This is when not going through the ICA connection (see point 2)
- Once Citrix has released the Universal Print Server (UPS), which is expected by the end of 2011, only use the UPS to connect to printers located on the print server.
- Set
Microsoft group policies to disallow Point-To-Print (P2P), to use print
isolation, disallow kernel-mode drivers and render jobs on the print
server.
Computer Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\Printers- Always render print jobs on the server
- Execute print drivers in isolated processes
- Point to Print Restrictions (set to localhost)
- Disallow installation of printers using kernel-mode drivers
See also - How to Restrict Print Drivers From Being Installed on XenApp Servers Hosted on Windows Server 2008/R2http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX128786
- How to Restrict Print Drivers from Being Installed on XenApp Servershttp://support.citrix.com/article/CTX120618
- Set Citrix user policies to avoid unwanted in-box printer driver.
User Policy\ICA\Printing\Automatic installation of in-box printer drivers = Disabled
----- if you cannot use Citrix universal print driver ---- - Always use Microsoft native printer driver first, that come with the operating system.
- How to Distinguish Native/Inbox Print Drivers from Non-native/Manufacturer Ones in Windows Server 2008 R2http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX126093
- When you use 3rd party printer driver (HP, Lexmark, Xerox etc.), test them first with StressPrinters and make sure the spooler doesn't crash.
- Understand and use StressPrintershttp://bit.ly/StressPrinters
- Do not use 3rd party printer driver with print monitors, try to get drivers without monitors or disable/remove them.
- Out of experience, avoid PCL6 printer driver if you have to use 3rd party printer driver.
Q&A
Q: When using 3rd party printer driver what can happen?A: If you are lucky nothing but you might see: print spooler crash, delayed logons, stuck logons or the worst blue screen of death (BSOD) - server crash.
Q: Why only use the Citrix EMF universal printer driver?
A: With Windows Clients, EMF actually uses the local client printer driver with all capabilities.
Q: What about non-Windows (MAC, Linux...) clients?
A: Non-Windows clients cannot use EMF and automatically fall back to a Universal Printer Driver (UPD) based on a color laser printer but will not give all capabilities the client printer driver might have.
Q: Why not use HP Universal Printer Driver?
A: The HP UPD should only be used for network printer mapped to the XenApp Server and only until UPS is released. With HP UPD make sure you use at least version 5.x and printer isolation, since the driver has been buggy in the past
- HP Printers Supported in XenApp Environments
http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX110571
A: As it says, it isolates the printer driver and therefore protects the spooler to crash. So if the driver is buggy, the isolation might fail but the driver will not crash the spooler service.
Q: Why disable Point-To-Print (P2P)?
A: P2P automatically installs printer driver without you really knowing it. That can be very dangerous because you might spread a bad driver to all servers in your farm.
Q: Why should a print server be close to a XenApp server and not located in a branch office over WAN?
A: Especially with Office 2010, printers are "live" enumerated and over a WAN might take a long time. Also the XenApp server would do a RPC call over the WAN to the print server and is very slow and sluggish.
Q: Why avoid PCL6 printer drivers?
A: There is no technical reason but experience from the field has shown the PCL6 driver to cause several issues.
Q: What is the Citrix Universal Print Server (UPS)?
A: It's an upcomming printing component, hopefully released by the end of 2011. In short, UPS has two parts the print server service (you install on the print server) and a client service (UPC) that will be installed on a XenApp server. Now network printer between print server and XenApp will be mapped also with the Citrix EMF and therefore no printer driver on the XenApp server needs to be installed! UPS is high secure, optimized and allows even firewall transversal. UPS uses the Citrix common gateway protocoll (CGP) and the UPC will be incl. in future XenApp releases.
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