Understanding and using Citrix StressPrinters Utility
What is the number one headache of Citrix and Terminal Services administrators? The answer in most polls is printing. Fortunately, Citrix created a tool called StressPrinters that helps administrators proactively test print drivers in a multi user environment. The description on Citrix StressPrinters states “many driver problems in the Terminal Services environment revolve around poor multi-threaded performance, which in turn can cause Print Spooler instability. Problematic multi-threaded performance is usually exposed when multiple users connect to a Terminal Server simultaneously using the same print driver. Symptoms include the failure to autocreate client printers, increased thread count of the Printer Spooler and/or Citrix Print Manager services, and possibly the unresponsiveness and/or unexpected termination of these services (crashes). This tool can be used to simulate multiple sessions autocreating printers using the same print driver.”
Thomas Koetzing has written a very nice article on understanding and using the Citrix StressPrinters utility. Thomas explains what StressPrinters does and how it works. He then gives detailed instructions on how to stress test printers (with screen shots). Finally, Thomas delves in to some advanced concepts.
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