PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) Survival Guide

Article
1/17/2024

Introduced in Windows PowerShell v4, Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) provides a configuration platform built into Windows that is based on open standards. DSC is flexible enough to function reliably and consistently in each stage of the deployment lifecycle (development, test, pre-production, production), as well as during scale-out, which is required in the cloud world.

DSC provides powerful management capability for your Windows infrastructure, both on premises and in the cloud. It does this by introducing a very simple declarative syntax into the PowerShell language, and a built-in engine that receives and applies the configuration. You describe the desired state of your environment by using this new declarative syntax, and then distribute it to each target node in your environment where it is made so. After the configuration is delivered and applied, it can be used to correct configuration drift when it occurs, or just report on configuration drift, so that you know that it has occurred.

To help you get started learning PowerShell DSC, below are lists of articles from Microsoft and Community Resources.

Microsoft Articles on the PowerShell DSC

Here is a list of PowerShell DSC articles from Microsoft sources on Microsoft websites.

Configuration in a DevOps world - Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration

Holiday Gift – Desired State Configuration (DSC) Resource Kit Wave-1

Get Started with Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration

PowerShell DSC Resource for configuring Pull Server environment

Built-In Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration Resources

Build Custom Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration Resources

DSC Diagnostics Module– Analyze DSC Logs instantly now!

xPSDesiredStateConfiguration Module – PowerShell DSC Resource Kit

Configuring a SQL High Availability Group with DSC