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I am in charge of a print server at my medium size business. There are one-thousand two-hundred printers on the print server and most of them are HP printers, along with some Zebra printers.

My challenge is that the print server is Windows Server 2008R2 and this OS is no longer supported. I tried an in place upgrade to Windows Server 2012R2, but it came through on the other side with Server Manager and Event Viewer crashing. The print server is a vm running on Hyper-V, so I was able to revert it to a snapshot. I didn't do much troubleshooting.

What would you recommend that I do?

  1. Try the in-place upgrade again and simply focus on troubleshooting the issues after the upgrade.
  2. Build a Windows Server 2016 server with the print and document services role, import the printers with a Printer Migration File, and do an IP address and name switch. I can't find the documentation for the Windows Server 2016 Print and Document Services role.
  3. Other approach.

Thanks for your help with this.

-Tim Diskataneous

Massimo
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Tim Diskataneous
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  • 2nd choice seems fine. Also I'd suggest Windows Server 2019, it's just a print server, no compatibility issues will arise, why not have the latest? Unless licensing or your Hyper-V version prohibits it. – Krackout Nov 03 '20 at 19:56
  • In-place upgrades are notoriously risky. An in-place upgrade of a print server with 1200 printers (how many different drivers?) is a recipe for disaster. – Massimo Nov 03 '20 at 20:00
  • Thanks for your help John Mahowald, Massimo, and Krackout. I'll build a Win2k19 vm and make it the new print server. One of my biggest road blocks currently is finding documentation on Print and Document Services for Windows Server 2019. I can find it for Windows server 2012R2, but not Win2k19. I have a hunch that Microsoft wants me to move printing to Azure and that that may be why I'm not finding the documentation I need. Please let me know if you have any hot tips on documentation. I will continue searching... – Tim Diskataneous Nov 03 '20 at 21:28

1 Answers1

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Build a new print server on the latest OS version, currently Windows Server 2019.

Enough has changed in the years since where an in-place upgrade is a huge leap, not trivial to do. Just the base operating system, not counting drivers and any cruft they left behind.

Your efforts are better spent planning an executing a migration to a new host. Get printer inventory into a machine readable format, run an import script, test every driver. Plan the cut over: new names in DNS, any configuration policy to be deployed. A benefit of the build new approach, all build and testing can be done ahead of time.

John Mahowald
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