# Replacing Print Server



## spartangtr (Jan 25, 2011)

I'm currently workin on replacing our server 2003 print server with a server 2008 box. right now i've stood up a new test VM to test out new drivers, so both are up in parralel right now. The older box has old drivers, the new box has the fancy new global drivers for everything. Right now, printers are being pushed to end users through GPO using a UNC(\\servername\printer). Everything looks OK, getting ready to pull the trigger and swap out the boxes. 

My plan was to keep the same server name, so during a down time i'll remove the old box from the domain, reset the computer account for it, rename the new box, and add it to the domain using the same server name. Will this technically work for the printer mapping since the UNC will be the same? And from a client end, what's going to happen when I introduce a much newer print driver than what's currently on there? Will it automatically update all client print drivers or will there have to be some sort of intervention? This would be mostly Win7 clients.


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## Rockn (Jul 29, 2001)

Personally, I would set them up in parallel and then migrate everyone over to the new one and then retire the old server. Just migrate a few users at a time and see if there are any issues. In my experience most of the universal print drivers cause more issues than they solve.


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