Learning PowerShell DSC

By : James Pogran

4 (1)

Buy this Book

Learning PowerShell DSC

4 (1)

By: James Pogran

Buy this Book

Overview of this book

The main goal of this book is to teach you to configure, deploy, and manage your system using the new features of PowerShell v5/v6 DSC. This book begins with the basics of PowerShell Desired State Configuration, covering its architecture and components. It familiarizes you with the set of Windows PowerShell language extensions and new Windows PowerShell commands that make up DSC. Then it helps you create DSC custom resources and work with DSC configurations with the help of practical examples. Finally, it describes how to deploy configuration data using PowerShell DSC. Throughout this book, we will be focusing on concepts such as building configurations with parameters, the local configuration manager, and testing and restoring configurations using PowerShell DSC. By the end of the book, you will be able to deploy a real-world application end-to-end and will be familiar enough with the powerful Desired State Configuration platform to achieve continuous delivery and efficiently and easily manage and deploy data for systems.

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Free Chapter

Introducing PowerShell DSC

What is PowerShell DSC?

Why do we need configuration management?

DSC quick wins

DSC high-level overview

Why all the abstraction?

How does DSC help?

DSC features

PowerShell V4 DSC

PowerShell V5 DSC

PowerShell V6 DSC

Summary

DSC Architecture

Overview

Push and pull modes

The general workflow

The example workflow

Configuration data

Local Configuration Manager

The DSC pull server

Deployment considerations

Summary

DSC Configuration Files

Defining a DSC configuration script file

Defining a DSC configuration data file

Creating reusable DSC configurations

Debugging and troubleshooting configuration script files

Summary

DSC Resources

What are DSC resources?

Summary

Pushing DSC Configurations

Tooling

Setting things up

Locally pushing DSC configurations

Remotely pushing DSC configurations

Things you must consider when pushing DSC configurations

Summary

Pulling DSC Configurations

Creating DSC pull servers

Validating a DSC pull server install

Registering target nodes with a DSC pull server

Pulling DSC configurations with a DSC pull server

DSC pull server and target node status

Summary

DSC Cross Platform Support

DSC cross-platform support

Summary

Example Scenarios

Real-life DSC usage

Setting up a common installation base

Installing software

Configuration management refresher

Complicated deployments

Handling change

Summary

Customer Reviews

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Things you must consider when pushing DSC configurations

Our example DSC configuration is pretty simple even if it worked well to showcase how to push DSC configurations. When DSC configurations become more complex, there are things you must take into consideration.

Up until now, we have been configuring settings or enabling software with DSC Resources that were already present on the target host. What if we tried to use text files and MSIs that were not present on the target node? In all our examples, we haven't had to actually do any work to get the files we want onto our target nodes. And herein lies the main problem with pushing DSC configurations. Nothing is done for us; we have to copy everything and ensure everything is present and accessible on the target nodes. So, what do we have to do for ourselves when pushing DSC configurations?

When pushing DSC configurations...