What is MOSDAL?
MOSDAL stands for Microsoft Online Services Diagnostics And Logging Support Toolkit. This is a toolkit recently released by Microsoft to help customers collect network and system configuration information so they can effectively troubleshoot issues with Microsoft Online Services. (These are Microsoft’s set of Online Applications that they offer now. Currently if you are using online applications like Microsoft CRM, Microsoft Exchange Online, or their business productivitity suite – which is just Office online really with Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, with Office Communications Online and LiveMeeting). The toolkit also lets you perform network diagnostics (since this is often the real problem with using online applications) and other diagnostics that will help technicians get enough data to troubleshoot and resolve network, configuration, and installation issues. The main function that the toolkit provides is that it goes out and automatically gathers registry keys, log files, and other configuration settings that would take a significant amount of time to collect by hand. This includes a list of currently running processes, environment variables, and available event logs. The toolkit also collects information on the currently installed devices, drivers, services, hotfixes, and applications. This toolkit can be run as both Administrator and Non-Administrator accounts. When it runs it will create a hierarchy of folders inside of the MOSDALReports folder. A log file named MOSDALLog.txt is in there and this tracks the progress of the data collection.
The toolkit collects information about .NET Framework, Microsoft Online Service Client, Internet Explorer, Outlook, Live Meeting, Live Meeting Add-In for Outlook, the Transporter Tool and Directory Synchronization Tool. For each application, the toolkit verifies whether or not it is installed, collects the version number of the certain program files and other appropriate files, and gathers the relevant registry keys. Some additional information is also captured, which varies for each application. For both the Service Client and the Transporter Tool, the toolkit collects the config folders from the installed location and the config and log folders from the user’s Application Data folder. It collects debugging and other log data for Live Meeting and the Live Meeting Add-in. The toolkit also verifies the proxy settings of Internet Explorer and collects the transport log files of Outlook. The data collected from the Directory Synchronization tool includes a list of local user accounts, detailed information on the MIIS_Service user, which is used in the synchronization process, and copies of the log and config folders. So for those of you having problems like we have had with your MIcrosoft online services this is a real helpful tool. One key usage technique is that you need to always run the tool in the context of the user that is having the issues with the online application. You can run the toolkit on 32 bit and 64 bit versions of:
- Windows XP Professional
- Windows Vista Enterprise
- Windows Vista Business
- Windows Vista Ultimate
- Windows Server 2003
- Windows Server 2003 R2
You can download the toolkit here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=457E0786-1BEC-40A2-95AB-06428F53B5CC&displaylang=en Installation is the typical wizard and pretty straight forward.
