Chapter 41. Desired State Configuration
This chapter covers
- Overview of DSC
- Installing and configuring DSC
- Creating resources
- Using DSC
Desired State Configuration (DSC) was introduced in Windows PowerShell v4 as part of the Windows Management Framework 4.0. That means it’s available on Windows Server 2008 R2 and later, although as you’ll learn in this chapter its usefulness is determined by the compatible resources available on a given computer. DSC is heavily tilted toward server management rather than client management, but as you’ll see, it has applications for clients as well.
DSC is an attempt by Microsoft to provide declarative configuration management in a standards-based fashion. There’s an important distinction here: with declarative configuration, you give a computer a description of what you want that computer to look like. You don’t worry about how it gets that way—you just tell it what you want. That’s different from the more familiar imperative configuration, where you write a script that makes whatever changes necessary to make a computer look the way you want.