Configure Windows Server 2012 R2 - MCSA Windows Server 2012 R2: Installation and Configuration Study Guide - page 224

Configuring Print Services

One of the most important components on a network is the printer. Printers today are
almost as important as the computers themselves. Think about your network. What would
your network be like without a printer? Even small networks or home networks have a
printer today.
How many printers do you want on your network? It is not feasible to put a printer on
every user's desk. What if some users need black and white while others need color? Do you
give each user two printers? What if they need laser printing for reports but ink-jets will
work fine for every other type of print job? These are all questions that you must answer
before buying any printers for your networks.
This is also where network printers and print servers come into play. Network printers
are printers that can be directly connected to the network through some form of network
interface card. These printers usually have settings that can be configured for your
network needs. For example, if your network uses DHCP, you can set the printer to be a
DHCP client.
Print servers are servers that have a connected printer, where the server handles all
printing issues. This is an excellent solution for printers that cannot directly connect to
the network. Once the printer is connected to the network (through the use of a NIC or a
server), the end user just connects to the printer and prints. To the end user, there is no real
difference between the two options.
Before an end user can print to a network printer, an administrator must connect, set
up, share, and publish the printer for use. An administrator must also set the permissions
on the printer to allow users to print to that printer. The following sections will discuss
these items in detail.

Creating and Publishing Printers

Once your printer is installed, you must share the printer and then publish the printer to
Active Directory before users can print to it. Printers can be published easily within Active
Directory. This makes them available to users in your domain.
Exercise 4.7 walks you through the steps you need to take to share and publish a Printer
object by having you create and share a printer. To complete the printer installation, you
need access to the Windows Server 2012 installation media (via the hard disk, a network
share, or the CD/DVD drive). If you do not have a printer for this exercise, just choose one
from the list and continue the exercise.

exeRCiSe 4.7

Creating and publishing a printer

Press the Windows key and select ➢ Control Panel ➢ Devices and Printers ➢ Add
Printer. This starts the Add Printer Wizard.

1.