Storing log files within MDT 2010

So I wanted to know what was going on and what part my deployment was in, so I did some research and it seems that MDT 2010 could capture *.log files. You have two options one to log the files centrally or two on a network share. In my case, I stored the logs on a network share [Linux box]. Log capturing is great because if something goes wrong your could look at the log and troubleshoot from there.

There are 2 types of logging available. The first is standard logging –  which stores the logs on a network share at the end of a deployment. This is cool, but you have to wait at the end to see if stuff failed. The second is dynamic logging – which writes the log files in real-time to a network\central share throughout the deployment process. This option was great, because you could use Trace32 and view everything live; especially if you have Windows Update enable in your Task Sequence this shows you what is being pushed out.

Setting this up:

note:[I’m using the IP address of the server because when I used the computer name of the server I received several errors in connection when i placed the IP all errors disappeared]

Open up your customsettings.ini and enter one of these properties. In this example of standard logging, the log files are copied to a share at the end of the deployment process:

SLShare=\\192.168.1.0\Logs

This example shows dynamic logging, where the log files are copied in real-time to a share throughout the deployment process: [this is cool if you are using Trace32 to open the logs up and see everything happen “Live”]

SLShareDynamicLogging=\\192.168.1.0\Logs

In most cases you can just create a folder called logs in the deployment share itself and target that location for your logs:

SLShareDynamicLogging=\\192.168.1.0\DeploymentShare$\Logs [I won’t recommend this because you have enough traffic going to your MDT server

Here is an example of a Log file:

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