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Print Server Overview

ScrewDrivers Print Server provides enterprise-grade print management that works across any platform, letting your users print from any application to any available printer. You'll use Print Server when you need centralized printer deployment and management in virtual desktop or terminal server environments. This reference covers the architectural considerations and environment setup requirements you'll need to understand before configuring Print Server printers.

Overview​

Print Server consolidates print drivers and spooling on dedicated print servers rather than individual endpoints or session hosts. This architecture reduces administrative overhead dramatically—instead of managing drivers on hundreds of session hosts or VDI machines, you maintain a single set of printers and drivers that all users can access. You can assign printers either statically (specific printers to specific users or groups) or dynamically based on client location using hostname, IP address, or IP address ranges. This flexibility makes Print Server particularly valuable for organizations with distributed offices or mobile workforces where users need different printer access depending on their location.

The Print Server component sits between your session hosts (where users run applications) and your physical printers. When a user logs into a remote session, the Print Server Session Agent automatically creates the appropriate printers based on your configuration. The actual print processing happens on the Print Server itself, which means your session hosts don't need any printer drivers installed—they simply send jobs to the Print Server using ScrewDrivers' optimized protocol.

Environment Considerations​

Before you add Print Server objects to your ScrewDrivers database, you'll need to evaluate three key architectural questions that affect your deployment approach. Getting these decisions right upfront prevents the need to reconfigure later, which can be disruptive to your users.

Failover Requirements​

Your first consideration is whether you need high availability for printing. If printing is business-critical (think healthcare facilities where prescription labels and patient records must print reliably, or retail environments where receipts and shipping labels can't fail), you'll want to configure failover print servers before adding any printers to the database.

A failover configuration requires at least two identical print servers with matching print queues, queue names, drivers, and operating systems. You designate one as the primary and the other as failover. If ScrewDrivers can't communicate with any printer on the primary server, it automatically queries the failover servers in order until a print job completes successfully. This isn't load balancing—the failover servers remain idle until the primary fails. See Print Server Failover for detailed configuration procedures.

Cloud Connector Needs​

The second consideration is whether your architecture requires a cloud connector (also called a proxy). In most traditional environments where session hosts and print servers are on the same network, you won't need this. However, if you're running managed service provider (MSP) scenarios or certain cloud configurations where the Print Server needs to initiate connections differently, you'll need to set up the cloud connector before adding printers.

The cloud connector reverses the direction of initial communication between session hosts and Print Servers. This matters in environments where firewalls or network segmentation prevent session hosts from directly reaching print servers, but the print servers can reach the session hosts. See Cloud Connector Setup for when you'd use this and how to configure it.

Printer Visibility and Filtering​

Your third consideration is whether all printers on your print servers should be available to users through ScrewDrivers Administration. In most environments, you'll want to filter out certain printers—things like FAX machines, Microsoft XPS Document Writer, or administrative printers that aren't meant for general use.

You can control printer visibility using the ScrewDrivers Printers application on each print server. This application lets you specify which printers should be reported to ScrewDrivers Administration and which should remain hidden. When you later query the Print Server object in Administration, you'll see only the printers you've made visible, which simplifies printer assignment and prevents users from accidentally selecting inappropriate destinations. You'll configure this after installing the Print Server service but before adding Print Server objects to the database.

Architecture Benefits​

Print Server's architecture provides several significant advantages over traditional printing approaches. Because drivers live on dedicated print servers rather than session hosts, you eliminate the "driver hell" problem where incompatible or poorly-written drivers crash sessions or create conflicts. You can test driver updates on the print server without risking session host stability.

The centralized spooling model also improves performance and resource utilization. Session hosts don't consume disk space for print spools, and print processing happens on servers optimized for that workload. Users get faster application return times because jobs spool to the Print Server rather than spooling locally and then transmitting.

Dynamic printer assignment based on client location means your mobile users automatically get appropriate printers without manual configuration. A user in your New York office gets New York printers; the same user traveling to London gets London printers automatically on their next login. This location awareness eliminates help desk calls about missing printers and improves the user experience significantly.