Enabling or disabling printers on a vDisk
Note: The Printer Management feature is only recommended if you are not using Active Directory to manage printer groups.
By default, printers are not enabled on the vDisk. Enable or disable printers from the Target Device Properties vDisk tab. On the Printers dialog, enable the checkbox next to each printer to enable or disable it. After enabling (assigning) printers to target devices, the Printer Management feature must then be enabled on the vDisk.
Until Printer Management is enabled, all printers that are installed on the target device are available to that target device. By enabling Printer Management, you can select printers or remove printers from individual target devices.
After a target device boots, printer information, which is included in a vDisk image, becomes available to target devices. Printer Management is initially disabled until all printer-to-target device assignments are completed for the vDisk. Disabling individual printers prohibits target devices from accessing those printers.
Note: Disabling printers does not remove the printer information from the vDisk. Changes to the target devices printer assignments do not occur until the target device reboots.
Examples of reasons you may want to disable Printer Management include:
- You may be using a different printer system that installs the valid printers on each target device and software may delete them or cause conflicting settings.
- Printers that are included on the vDisk should be accessible to all users.
- The system needs to be configured before being deployed. Until the Printer Management feature is enabled, changes can be made for different target devices as needed.
All printers installed on a vDisk appear in the Details panel when the Printers group folder is expanded for that vDisk.
If a disk is a HA vDisk (has a duplicate with same vDisk name), changes to that printer (if it is enabled or disabled for a target device) are automatically made to the duplicate vDisk.
Enablement Methods
Using the Console, you can manage which target devices use which printers. There are several methods for managing target device printer assignments. Choose from the following methods:
- Enabling printers for target devices using the Printer settings option. Use this method to enable or disable a single printer to multiple target devices accessing a vDisk.
- Enabling printers for target devices using the Printers group folder. Use this method to select printer settings (enable/disable; default) for a single target device.
- Enabling printers using Copy and Paste. Use this method to copy printer settings of one target device (enabled/disabled; default printer), to one or more target devices selected in the Details panel.
- Enabling printers using an existing target device as a template. Use this method to automatically set printer settings when a target device is added to the network.
Note: The Administrator may choose to limit the number of printers for particular target devices or select different default printers for particular target devices. The settings that are selected are saved to the target device’s personality information (if the limit for this field, 65K, is reached, a message appears indicating that some of the settings will not be saved and offers suggestions for decreasing the size).