In a site with two servers where can I expect to see my ULS log entry?

Question

I'm using SPDiagnosticsService to write an entry to the ULS logs. On a load-balanced environment with 2 front-end servers I can't find the entries at all, but it works fine on my local dev environment where there is only one place they could be (only 1 14 hive).

Is there something else I need to take into account when dealing with this sort of set-up?

Answer 1

There are no additional configurations needed for setting up trace logs over a load balanced environment.

However, if ULS are not populating at all you can check the following items :-

On both WFE , go to Windows Services (services.msc) and see if SharePoint 2010 Tracing is started or not.

Central Admin > Monitoring > Configure Diagnostic logging:
Check for Path for ULS entries is a valid one. (If its a network share , check access rights of the service account on the shared folder)

Additionally, check for what level of logging have you enabled in the diagonistic logging settings like you might want to turn on the verbose option to see detailed traces in the ULS.

Answer 2

ULS logs are located on each SharePoint server, in 14 hive by default.

You need to check in Central Admin whether ULS log location has been changed in this load balanced environment.

Answer 3

It is possible to use the PowerShell commandlet Merge-SPLogfile to combine trace log entries from all farm computers into a single log file on the local computer.

However, this might be a time consuming operation since you are merging all the log data from all the farm servers.

Answer 4

False alarm, the new code (newly incorporated logging methods) hadn't been deployed. Log entries were found on one of the ULS logs on one of the boxes once the timer job was deployed and ran (for those wondering). I was unsure whether to expect them to be split between the two or not but fortunately they were all in one place.

Thanks for all the replies, all very relevant.