The Print Management console in
Windows Server 2012 helps organizations better manage and administer
printers on an enterprise basis. Before the Print Management console,
which was first introduced in the Windows Server 2003 R2 time frame as
a standalone installation, a network administrator had to point to each
network printer or printer server individually to manage and administer
the device. For a large enterprise with hundreds of printers and dozens
of printer servers, this was a very tedious task to select print
servers each and every time a printer needed to be managed.
Furthermore, if the administrator didn’t remember which printer was
attached to which print server, it could take a while to eventually
find the printer and print server that needed management.
The Print Management console, which was later
integrated into the Windows operating system, provides a single
interface where an administrator can view all printers and print
servers in the enterprise. Furthermore, printer resources can be
grouped to simplify administration of some of the printers. For
example, if an organization has an administrator for a particular
building, the Print Management interface could be filtered to only list
printers within the building. This would allow the administrator to
only see certain printers they are responsible for and to consolidate
multiple print server groups of printers into a single interface for
management and administration.
The Print
Management component only needs to be installed on the system that the
administrator is managing from; it does not need to be installed on all
print servers or systems in the enterprise. Functionally, Print
Management could be installed on just one system. However, it is
automatically installed on Windows Server 2012 servers with the Print
Service role installed.
1. Installing the Print Management Console
The Print Management console is installed as
one of the Remote Server Administration Tools in the features or as
part of the Print Server role of Windows Server 2012. To install the
Print Management console on a management server that is not a print
server, complete the following steps:
1. Launch Server Manager.
2. Expand the Manage menu and select Add Roles and Features.
3. Accept the default Installation Type.
4. Select the
appropriate server on the Server Selection page. Note: If not
installing on the local server, the target server must be added to
server manager before starting this process.
5. Select no roles and click Next
6. In the feature selection dialog, expand the Remote Server Administration Tools and the Role Administration Tools.
7. Check the Print and Document Services Tools check box.
8. Click Next, Install, and Close to complete the installation process.
Now the Print Management console will be available within Server Manager on the server.
2. Configuring the Print Management Console
After the Print Management console
has been installed on a system, you need to configure the utility to
identify the printers and print servers in the enterprise. Printers can
be manually added to the Print Management console for administration
and management, or the network can be scanned to attempt to
automatically identify printers in the enterprise.
To configure print management resources, launch the Print Management console as follows:
1. Select Start.
2. Expand the Manage menu and select the Print Management option.
Upon opening the Print Management console, a screen appears similar to the one shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Print Management console.
