HP UPD - System Administrator's Guide HP UPD 5.6.5

The diagram above depicts a more typical enterprise printing environment, where a client can be connected
to more than one print server and might also have directly connected products. It is in these situations that
careful driver version management is critical.
Consider the following scenario: The client first Plugs and Plays with printer C, causing the pre-loaded print
driver v3.0 to be installed. Next, the client connects and prints to server A. Microsoft Point and Print
recognizes that the driver version on the client (v3.0) does not match the driver version on the server (v1.0),
so the server installs driver v1.0 on the client.
Then the client connects to and prints to server B. Again Point and Print recognizes the driver version
difference and installs driver v2.0 onto the client.
The net result is that every time the client switches from one print server to another, a driver installation
takes place. And as for the client Plug and Play connection to printer C, the driver is also changed from the
original v3.0 to either v1.0 or v2.0.
Figure I-4 Solution
Server B
HP Universal Printing (v5.0)
`
HP Universal Printing
HP Universal Printing (v4.7)
HP Universal Printing (v5.0)
Printer B
Printer C
USB or TCP/IP
TCP/IP
Server A
HP Universal Printing (v4.7)
Printer A
TCP/IP
There are two solutions to this problem: One is to make sure that every client and every server in the
enterprise is using the same version of driver. However, given the size of most networks this solution is
impractical. The other is to use the version management feature of the HP UPD.
Starting with v4.7, HP UPD has the ability to be installed either using a generic name, (HP Universal Printing),
or a version specific name, (HP Universal Printing (v4.7)). The recommended practice is to install HP UPD on
servers using the version specific name. The diagram above describes this. Printer C Plugs and Plays with the
driver named HP Universal Printing. This driver can be v4.7, v5.x, or even v4.5. Server A downloads HP
Universal Printing (v4.7) and Server B downloads HP Universal Printing (v5.0). The net result is that there are
now 3 drivers installed on the client, and no unintended driver upgrades/downgrades taking place.
When Server A is upgraded to HP UPD 5.X, it will see that HP UPD v5.x is already installed on the client (from
the connection to Server B) and use it.
ENWW Versioning of print driver shared files 241