Creating the Spooler

Adding printers requires the creation of a spooler for the cluster so the cluster can be used as a print server. Without a spooler, you cannot add printers.

Prerequisites

To create a spooler for a cluster, you must be the administrator of the cluster as well as of each node within the cluster.

You must also have the administration software installed on your computer. Cluster Administrator is the graphical application supplied with the Cluster service package to manage clusters. Alternatively you can use Cluster.exe, a command-line tool, or custom administration tools developed using the Cluster service command interfaces.

Specifying the Resource

The network applications, data files, and other tools installed on the nodes are the cluster resources, which provide services to network clients. The spooler is specified by selecting the Print Spooler resource type in the Cluster Administrator window or using a Cluster.exe command. Resources are organized into groups, consisting of resources that are interdependent and therefore must fail over together. There can be no more than one Print Spooler resource per cluster group.

The procedure to specify a Print Spooler resource is as follows. It is like the procedure for creating any resource in Cluster service, and more details can be found in other chapters in this book.

To create a Print Spooler resource

1. In the Cluster Administrator window, start the New Group Wizard, and then create a group for the print spooler.

   This group, called the virtual server, is used to contain all resources necessary to create a printer share.

2. Add an IP Address resource to the group.

   This resource is a prerequisite for the Network Name resource, created next. If the nodes have Print Services for Unix installed and started, clients with the LPR utility can also use this IP address to access the printer.

3. Add a Network Name resource to the group.

   This is the server name (cluster name) that clients will use when connecting to the printer share.

4. Add a Physical Disk resource to the group.

   The Physical Disk resource is where the spooler files for the printer shares will be stored. This resource must be on the SCSI bus that is common to the nodes.

5. Add the Print Spooler resource to the group.

   Ensure that the spool directory is placed on a Physical Disk resource that is part of the group.

6. Configure the possible owners.
7. Add the Physical Disk and Network Name resources as dependencies.
8. On the Parameters property sheet for the Print Spooler resource type, configure the following options:
   • Spool folder: type a fully qualified path for the spool folder (for example, G:\Spool). The spooler creates the folder if it does not already exist.
   • Job completion time out: specify how long the document can take to get from the client to the printer before the printer stops trying to print it.
9. Use Cluster Administrator to bring the Print Spooler resource online.

After you have created and configured the Print Spooler resource, you need to install printer drivers on each node and add printers to the clustered spooler.

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