Powershell DSC A-B-C’s 

Page 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 2 

Page 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 / Copyright ©2014 by Readify Pty Ltd 3 

Page 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 / Copyright ©2014 by Readify Pty Ltd 4 

Page 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. / Copyright ©2014 by Readify Pty Ltd 5 

Page Nodes › Define the targets the configuration applies to › Won’t go into depth here since our configurations are only applied to single servers / Copyright ©2014 by Readify Pty Ltd 6 

Page 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’. / Copyright ©2014 by Readify Pty Ltd 7 

Page 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 / Copyright ©2014 by Readify Pty Ltd 8 

Page Honourable Mentions › Pull vs Push configuration › Configuration variables / Copyright ©2014 by Readify Pty Ltd 9 

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