Monitoring Deployment with MDT 2013

Today i am here to discuss a feature of Microsoft Deployment Toolkit that i found it very intresting if you work with this tool and i would like to share it with you. With the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2013 you can monitoring online all the Deployments from Console and check for errors or an other issue that face while deploy an application or Windows. It's a tool tht can hep you to troubleshoot any issue for any deployment with errors.

So let's find out how can enable monitoring !!!!

Enable Monitoring in MDT 2013

• Open Deployment WorkBench.
• Click in Monitoring and you will get an error. This is why you don't have enable the Monitoring for Deployment Share.
• Expand Deployment Shares 
• Right click in MDT Build Lab and select Properties.

• Go in Monitoring Tab.
• Check the option Enable Monitoring for this Deployment Share.Click OK.

​When you enable Monitoring 2 things happened

1. New Service installed as Microsoft Deployment Toolkit Monitor Service. This service receive events from every computer that use Deployment Share from MDT.

1. In the CustomSettings.ini add new entry like EventService=https://computername:9800. This entry used to inform clients where to send the informations.

• Now if you click in Monitoring you will not get any error as before and the right side is empty until start any deployment.

Verify the Monitoring Service

After enable the Monitoring now it's time to Verify if the Monitoring Service working. Open the following URL from the client or from the Server/Workstation that you have install the MDT
http://localhost:9800/MDTMonitorEvent/

If it's working you must get the an answer as the following printscreen

Monitoring Deployment  in MDT 2013

• Read the article Deploy Office 2010 with MDT 2013 if it's first time that you want to deploy an application from MDT 2013.
• When start the Deployment in the PC click in Monitoring and you will see in the right side the PC Name with lot of info as Progress, Step Name, Percent Complete and more....

• With the right click in the PC that you want to see more details select Properties you can see more Info and if the Deployment has any error or Warnings.
• In this case i have one Error and go in the specific PC to check what happened.

• Oh!!!. I change my Password of my username and forget to change it in Bootstrap.ini. So i get an error that can't access in DeploymentShare. (This happened if not use a standalone username only for this purpose. I change the credentials in Bootstrap.ini and i start again the Deployment.

Intresting feature that you can enable with simple steps and monitoring all your Deployments. Unfortunately when Deploy Office 2013 in all Workstations in my Company i didn't know for this feature and i must visit every 5 minutes the Workstations that has start the Deployment to check for errors. Imagine that i have 70 users in my company.

The monitoring feature will be very helpfull in the Office Deployment. So if you have setup all your Images and Apps for Deployment in MDT and have in mind for Deployment of multiple Workstations it's time to enable Monitoring.

I will come back in the future with MDT for troubleshooting of errors through deployment. I have few emails of users which get errors through deployment and i will happy to give them tools to resolve the errors quickly without need to search hours in google for an answer.. 

Now it's your turn. Try it and come back to give us your feedback and experience that you have with this feaure in our Commented System..