Now that we have covered both how deployments work (push and pull) in DSC and the workflow (authoring, staging, and execution) for using DSC, we will talk about how the execution happens on a target node.

The LCM is the PowerShell DSC engine. It is the heart and soul of DSC. It runs on all target nodes and controls the execution of DSC configurations and resources, whether you are using a push or pull deployment model. It is a Windows service, but is part of the WMI service host, so there is no direct service named LCM for you to look at.

The LCM has a large range of settings that control everything from the scheduling of executions to how the LCM handles configuration drift. LCM settings are settable by DSC itself, although using a slightly different syntax. This allows the LCM settings to be deployed just like DSC configurations, in an automatable and repeatable manner.

These settings are applied separately from your DSC configurations, so you will have configuration...