DSC a-b-c's

A short introduction to Powershell DSC terminology

Transcript

1. Powershell DSC A-B-C’s
   

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   Windows Management
   Framework 4
   › Brought us Powershell v4 and Powershell DSC 1.0
   › Brings together tooling we can use to configure
   windows servers and their environment into a central
   location, rather than having it scattered throughout
   various cmdlets and tools
   / Copyright ©2014 by Readify Pty Ltd
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   Powershell DSC
   › It is an extension to the powershell language
   › Use the powershell language to create and deploy
   configurations to servers
   › Primarily server focused, but can be run on client OS’s
   › Ensures servers are verifiably configured as you say they are –0
   configuration drift, self healing
   › The future of server management –you shouldn’t manage the
   server directly, just its configuration
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   Local Configuration Manager
   › The ‘server side’ of DSC
   › Consumes the configuration it is provided and does
   the heavy lifting
   › Takes the hard work out of configuring systems – you
   don’t need to know all of the commands required to
   do the work
   › Set it and forget it
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   Configuration
   › A new powershell command type we use to build the
   configuration templates that the LCM will apply to our
   servers
   › A configuration is just powershell code that defines the
   resources that make up our configuration, and what
   nodes they apply to
   › Once a configuration is processed, produces a MOF file
   – an industry standard format, not proprietary.
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   Nodes
   › Define the targets the configuration applies to
   › Won’t go into depth here since our configurations are
   only applied to single servers
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   Resources
   › Are a type of powershell module, used during DSC
   configuration to do the actual configuration work
   › The have three methods: Get-TargetResource, Set-
   TargetResource and Test-TargetResources
   › When a configuration is applied to a server, each
   resource defined runs its Test-TargetResource, and if
   this returns negative, Set-TargetResource is then run,
   which ‘makes it so’.
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   Requirements
   › WMF 4.0
   › .NET 4.5
   › Server 2008 R2 SP1 or higher
   › Windows 7 SP1 or higher
   › Powershell Remoting must be enabled on servers you
   want to configure – on by default on Server 2012
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   Honourable Mentions
   › Pull vs Push configuration
   › Configuration variables
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