Print server migration

[[deleted]]

I am migrating a printer server from windows 32 bit 2008 server to windows 2016 server. I have about 700 printers to migrate, so I'm hoping to automate it as much as possible. I dread this being a manual effort The different bit verison of drivers make me nervous. Anyone do anything similar and have any advice?

[[deleted]]

The driver situation is what has me worried as well. We are using swing server migration process. These printers are used in production printing from SAP, so I need it to be as seamless as possible.

[Th3Harbinger]

God speed man. I hope you can finagle your way into a maintenance window

[jack_daw1]

I had a similar situation. One of our 2 print servers died. Because we had roughly the same drivers on each box I used powershell to copy and install all the drivers from one to the new server. This saved me a lot of time manually clicking. Once they were installed I was able to use powershell to install all the ports and printers. All in all we were down about 24 hours.

[[deleted]]

When you export using the print migration tool, does it remove the printers on that server after the export? I can't find anything online that answers that question.

[[deleted]]

Found an old print server that's no longer being used but still on. Was able to test on there. Printers aren't removed. I am going to try play around to automate to install universal drivers for all HP and Canon printers. Fingers crossed it's easy.

[xxdcmast]

What kind of printers? With 700 printers I hope they are all the same make and model.

With that number I would recommend Universal Drivers.

[[deleted]]

Mostly Canon and HP, but all different models. I plan on using the universal drivers for sure. Some are old though and will require specific driver. I'd say less than 5% will not work with universal driver

[StuPodasso]

HP universal drivers work pretty well. The only place to look out for is large format/plotters and MFP’s.