VCAP-DTA – Objective 2.5 – Configure Location Based Printing

So we come to the final objective in section 2, configuring location based printing. In essence, this is harnessing the abilities of ThinPrint to enable printing from the View environment, using physical printers located nearby to the end users. There are three measured skills and abilities in this section, and are listed below.

• Configure location-based printing using a Group Policy Object – To start with, you need to register the ThinPrint DLL on an Active Directory server to enable the functionality within MMC. To do this, go to any of your Connection Servers and find the file TPVMGPoACmap.dll. There are both 32 bit and 64 bit versions. This file is located under C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware View\Server\extras\GroupPolicyFiles\ThinPrint.
  • Copy TPVMGPoACmap.dll to the Active Directory server (choose the appropriate version, 32/64 bit)
  • Register the DLL by running regsvr32 “C:\TPVMGPoACmap.dll” from a command prompt
  • Start Group Policy Management from Administrative Tools on an Active Directory server
  • Either create and link a new GPO or edit an existing one (depending on the exam scenario)
  • Go to Computer Configuration, Policies, Software Settings and Configure AutoConnect Map Additional Printers.
  • Ensure to select the Enabled radio button to start entering entries into the mapping table. Remember that selecting Disable without saving first will delete all of your printers!
  • Printer mappings can be used to map printers depending on certain rules, as per the example dialog below

• You will also need to know the syntax of each column for settings to become effective :-
  • IP Range – 10.10.1.1-10.10.1.50, for example. Or you can use an entire subnet, e.g. 10.10.1.0/24. You can also use an asterisk as a wildcard.
  • Client Name – So in the above example, PC01 maps a specific printer “Printer2”, again an asterisk is used as a wildcard.
  • Mac Address – Use the hyphenated format 01-02-03-04-05-CD for Windows and colons for Linux clients, so 01:02:03:04:05:CD.
  • User/Group – Map a specific printer to a specific user or group, such as jsmith or Finance.
  • Printer Name – This is the printer name as shown in the View session. The name doesn’t have to match names on the client system.
  • Printer Driver – Simply the printer driver name in Windows. This driver must be installed on the desktop.
  • IP Port/ThinPrint Port – the IP address of a networked printer to connect to, must be prepended with “IP”, so IP_192.168.0.50 for example.
  • Default – Whether this printer is the default printer.