2.1.3 Applicability

The Print Services system supports the use and management of a distributed print infrastructure. By using print servers and print clients that implement the member protocols that are described in this overview, one or more printers can be shared between one or more print clients.

The Print Services system scales from workgroup use, in which printers are shared between computers, to domain-based networks, in which multiple print servers are employed in a cluster configuration, and the print client configuration is managed by the Active Directory system. The Print Services system also provides a subset of functionality for managing a single printer that is connected to a single computer.

In addition to protocols supporting communication between print clients and print servers, the Print Services system also supports externally defined system protocols for the Group Policy system and the Active Directory system. The Print Services system uses the local file system services of the print server to store print jobs and printer drivers. The Print Services system also uses the local registry on the print server to persist the ADM of the print server. The Print Services system has minimal interaction with other components of Windows.

Managed printers are reflected in the Print Services system as print queues on a print server. Each print queue has an associated printer driver that is used by the Print Services system and applications to learn about printer capabilities, such as paper formats, color capabilities, and print quality. The associated printer driver is also responsible for conversion of application commands into the vendor-defined page description language (PDL) that is used to print a job on a printer.