Similar situation here, 484 printers at current count, 2120 users
(hospital), and we've been pretty happy with the Samba/CUPS solution.
However, recently, too many issues with Samba an printing (3.4.5,
debian), so we've gotten rid of it, still use it for file shares and
such. Anyway, we are a straight to cups setup here now. several
scripts are used by us with Desktop authority to "convert" the old
samba
printers to cups printers as the user logs in. It's working pretty good
actually, and our load on the printserver is always around .07... it's
flat amazing. For printing, I'd suggest looking at IPP - from windows
2k on, MS supports it client side, so it's pretty nice.
We are actually working on a system that will allow printer grouping -
eg, load a group of printers to a machine based on it's location or
presumed location. And have printers load to the system as a
system-wide printer instead of a personal printer - with all
driver/drawer settings correct. Yes, this is doable with samba easily,
but cups we've been having to do a bit of this on our side. Working
pretty good.
Good luck!
christoph.beyer at desy.de wrote:> Hi there,
>
> I almot exlusively use samba for printing in a semi large scale
> (>2.000 windows hosts & >500 printers). I have been running
3.0.20 for
> a long time and was quite happy with it.
>
> Unfortunately my windows fellows have now updated to AD 2008 R2 and I
> experienced some immediate problems with encryptions types so I
> updated to 3.4.5 which is not really working for me.
>
> I see a lot of connection rests and also the load is significantly
> higher than before, looks a bit like a denial of service attack ;)
> Also the shares don't show up constantly in the domain but disappear
> from time to time.
>
> My clients are 32bit windowsxp domain members and to make things a bit
> more complicated they received a MS security update at the same time
> which mainly concerns SMB (MS10-06 SMB Update).
>
> Are there any advices or experiences, I'm really in need ? :(
>
>
> cheers
> ~ christoph
>
> PS: Of couse I am also waiting for a samba based solution for windows
> 7 64 bit printing ;)
>
>
>