MDT 2010 New Feature #1: Logging directly to the network

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This is the first in what will probably end up being a long series of posts talking about new features in MDT 2010.  These won’t be in any particular order, and I’m sure I’ll miss some so don’t consider this an exhaustive list either.

First up is a new variable, SLShareDynamicLogging.  If you set this in CustomSettings.ini to a network path using something like this:

SLShareDynamicLogging=\\server\share\%OSDComputerName%

you’l see something interesting when the deployment is executing.  As the deployment progresses, each line being written to the local BDD.LOG on the local computer will also be written to the network location.  That will allow you to use something like TRACE32.EXE (https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=948e477e-fd3b-4a09-9015-141683c7ad5f&DisplayLang=en) to follow the progress of the deployment in real time, instead of waiting for the process to complete so that you can check the BDD.LOG.

This doesn’t affect the local log file, which will still be written to as well.

This will work for both Lite Touch and ConfigMgr deployments.  Because of the amount of network traffic that could be generated opening, writing, and closing the file for each log line, I wouldn’t recommend using this in production environments when you are performing lots of updates, but it could be very useful in lab environments.

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