Print Server Cluster Discovery Add-On Management Pack
As you may know Windows Server Print Server Management Pack for Windows Server 2008/2008 R2 does not support Print Services role that is hosted on cluster. This is because information about this role and printers on a cluster is not available through WMI. But there is a place where this information can be found: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE:\Cluster\Resources.
For easy understanding, let’s pretend I have a Windows cluster on two nodes – PS1 and PS2. Cluster name is PSC. On a node hosting print service information about printers can be obtained from registry. PS1 and PS2 have SCOM agents, so a Windows Computer object named PSC is discovered. We will use it to host additional discovered role and printers.
So here is a management pack named “Print Server Cluster Discovery Add-On”. It has a reference to Microsoft.Windows.Server.PrintServer.2008 pack of version 6.0.7004.0 and works with its objects, no new classes defined. All work is done by two discoveries:
Print Services 2008 Role Cluster Discovery (PFE.PrintServer.Cluster.Addon.PrintServerRoleDiscovery) – discovers Print Services role on a computer object that is clustered role. Disabled by default, so you need to enable it by override on PSC object, which is “Windows Computer”.
Print Services 2008 Printer Queue Cluster Discovery (PFE.PrintServer.Cluster.Addon.PrinterDiscovery) – discovers printers by registry. Disabled by default, so you have to enable it on Print Services role discovered on PSC. Also it is preferable to disable standard discovery of printers on this new role.
Clustered printers are presented in Performance Counters on active node, so monitors and collection rules should give relevant results. These discovered objects will be managed by agent on PS1 or PS2 depending on where the cluster object is.
The pack is not polished, so it may not work in your environment due to specific configuration, but it is a good starting point. I encourage to play around with it, so you may find it useful for monitoring printing service in your organization.