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Jon_Bilyeu_3270's avatar
Jon_Bilyeu_3270
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Aug 02, 2017

Print Spooler service monitoring

We are implementing a national print queue in my company so that a user could print to this queue and it will stay there until they go to a printer and badge into that device. Example: A user in Chicago is going to NYC and prints to this queue before leaving. He gets to NYC and badges into one of their printers and it prints their job locally on that printer.

 

We have the 3 print servers in our production data center (as well as our secondary DEV/QA/DR data center) load balanced successfully but we are looking to be able to monitor the print spooler service so the F5 can take the server in question out of the pool if the spooler service is hung or malfunctioning.

 

I know it is technically possible using the method outlined here:

 

https://devcentral.f5.com/articles/monitoring-windows-services-from-big-ip

 

but I was wondering if anyone ever came up with an alternative method for it as I know I'm not going to be allowed to do this method considering what has to be done to the F5 to accomplish this.

 

Thanks.

 

APM
application delivery
LTM
print spooler
service monitoring

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  • Hamish's avatar
    Hamish
    Icon for Cirrocumulus rankCirrocumulus
    Aug 02, 2017

    The best way to monitor a service is always to use the same communications in the monitor as a client would use to access the service.

     

    So if it's LPR for example, that's a simple connect to the lpd... If you can't add an external monitor (EAV) to your BigIP, then the easiest (relative) method I can think of is to run a separate VM or container that does the checks and put a quick & dirty HTTP server interface on it. Then the bigIP can poll the HTTP interface to get up/down and the up/down can be based on the results that the container/vm gets from the print queue itself.

     

    H

     

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