14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has released a stability update designed to resolve no less than three issues affecting Windows Server 2008 R2 Failover Print Clusters. The Redmond company detailed the problems impacting print server failover clusters running Windows Server 2008 R2, as well as the specific sources of the glitches and is offering customers a hotfix set up to return functionality to normal parameters.
“We recommend that you install this update on all the print server failover cluster nodes that are running Windows Server 2008 R2 to make sure that basic functionality and that basic manageability is maintained,” Microsoft stated.
The first two issues documented by the Redmond company involve the same symptoms. Customers have a shared printer installed on a Windows Server 2008 R2 print server failover cluster, with the print server ending up failing over to another node.
The first problem involves “the print processor of the related driver [having] multiple dependent files. (…) In this scenario, the shared printer may be missing on the new node after the failover operation. Only one dependent file is copied to the destination node in every failover operation. The printer is missing after the failover operation because some dependent files are not available,” Microsoft explained.
In the second scenario, clients opening connections to a shared printer will cause it to fail. This happens because the print server failover cluster is thrown into an infinite loop, according to the Redmond giant.
The third issue is associated with the use of the Print Back-up Restore Migrate utility (Printbrm.exe) in order to perform restore processes for printers on a print server failover cluster. Customers affected by the glitch reported that they were unable to restore certain printers, and that they came across the following error message: 1081 invalid printer name.
“In order to add the print processors to the print server failover cluster, the print spooler resource must first go offline and then come online. This issue occurs because the printer is restored before the print spooler resource comes back online,” Microsoft mentioned.