Question

Setup Remote printer in zOS

Mainframe, Capacity planning, Hardware, Integration with other platforms, Logical partitions, MVS, z/OS, zOS configuration

We have zOS v1R4 in a z900 mainframe server. I am a newly joined MVS system programmer here in this Datacenter. My requirement is as follows:

1) Currently we use TCP/IP to connect to LPARs in the mainframe
2) There is a remote laser printer in the client place(which is already networked)
3) We would like this printer to be configured in one of the LPARs so as to do remote printing from the mainframe sessions and also we need to use that for windows related printing

Now, what the required steps to go ahead with this ?

Kindly advise.

Rgds, Ramesh

Ramesh,

To define IP network printers to zOS you either need to be licensed for the Infoprint Server option of zOS (and possibly Infoprint Transforms), or you will need to use an equivalent non-IBM print management product like for instance VPS from Levi Ray and Shoup. Which you choose will probably depend on how many and which types of print data streams you need to support (plain ASCII text, PCL, postscript, AFP, PDF, etc.). Both of the vendor I mentioned support all the major ones, but their pricing options differ.

The initial setup of these products is not trivial. You will need to add statements to your JES2 PARMLIB member, as well as setting up some new address spaces. Once you get that done adding an new printer is relatively easy. Infoprint Server has an ISPF dialog for maintaining the printer inventory. For VPS you add a small member with definition statements to a print definition PDS.

Setup is really too big a topic to cover here. Your best bet is to take a look at the manuals. For Infoprint Server:

http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/Shelves/AOPBK343