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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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Summary

In this chapter, we covered end to end all the steps required to install, configure, and use a DSC pull server. We also covered some example ways of using diagnostic tools to check on the status of DSC pull servers. In the course of the chapter, we saw several different approaches to handling how to make DSC configuration scripts for both deploying DSC pull servers and also target nodes. Along the way, we covered the differences between WMF 4 and WMF 5 features and the possible ways to use them in your environment.

In the next chapter, we will look at some exciting new things for DSC: cross-platform support!