Technical data

Determinewhichprintersyouwanttomakeavailabletoyourservercommunity.
Some considerations regarding printers include:
•Location
Select printers that are closest to the physical location of users who require
their output.
•Costofuse
You might want to restrict access to expensive-to-use printers rather than
make them available to all network users. Conversely, using one network
printer for several groups in a building is less expensive than using separate
printers for each group in the building.
• Resolution
Users who frequently print graphics require printers with higher resolution.
Groups who usually print text files can use lower-resolution printers.
A computer can act simultaneously as a print server and a file server. The decision
to combine print and file servers might depend on security concerns. Although
printers should always be available to their users, you might want to locate a
file server in a secure place. Regardless of the size of your network, you most
likely will install printers on a few select computers. The only special hardware
requirement for print servers is that, if you are using parallel or serial printers,
the print servers must have the correct output ports.
Unlike parallel and serial devices, printers with built-in network adapter cards do
nothavetobeadjacenttotheprintserver.Network-interfaceprintersareattached
to the network through a built-in adapter card. The location of this type of printer
has no effect on printing performance, provided that users and printers are not on
opposite sides of a network bridge. A Compaq Advanced Server print server can
control a virtually unlimited number of network-interface printers.
The Compaq Advanced Server makes printers available to network users through
print shares. In addition, you can use a generic queue when several like printers
are available to the user. A generic queue can point to several execution queues
and is used to distribute printer work load among several like printers by routing a
print job to the first available printer through that printer’s execution queue. (If
you manage the shared printers from Windows NT, the Advanced Server allows you
to set up a printer pool, which is similar in function to an OpenVMS generic queue.)
You can use the Advanced Server ADMINISTER command line interface to add
printers (as print queues) and print shares to the Advanced Server and to manage
them. Alternatively, beginning with Version 7.3 of the Advanced Server for
OpenVMS, you can configure the server to allow management of shared printers
from Windows NT using the Windows NT print services. The default is to use the
Advanced Server ADMINISTER command line interface.
Each print share points to a single print queue with the same name as the
share. Permissions that you assign to the share are applied automatically to the
associated print queue. As with any other shared resource, a share can be accessed
over the network by users who have the appropriate permissions. Four types of
permissions apply to print shares: Print (the default), None (no access), Manage
Documents, and Full (full control).
For more information about sharing network printers, refer to the Compaq
Advanced Server for OpenVMS Concepts and Planning Guide.
4–8 OpenVMS Operating System TCP/IP Features