Book Image

Learning PowerShell DSC - Second Edition

By : James Pogran
Book Image

Learning PowerShell DSC - Second Edition

By: James Pogran

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.

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Table of Contents (9 chapters)
Preface
Preface
What this book covers
What you need for this book
Who this book is for
Conventions
Reader feedback
Customer support
Free Chapter
1
Introducing PowerShell DSC
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
2
DSC Architecture
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
3
DSC Configuration Files
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
4
DSC Resources
DSC Resources
What are DSC resources?
Summary
5
Pushing DSC Configurations
Pushing DSC Configurations
Tooling
Setting things up
Locally pushing DSC configurations
Remotely pushing DSC configurations
Things you must consider when pushing DSC configurations
Summary
6
Pulling DSC Configurations
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
7
DSC Cross Platform Support
DSC Cross Platform Support
DSC cross-platform support
Summary
8
Example Scenarios
Example Scenarios
Real-life DSC usage
Setting up a common installation base
Installing software
Configuration management refresher
Complicated deployments
Handling change
Summary

PowerShell V6 DSC

The PowerShell V6 release has been focused on several non-DSC specific features, but DSC benefits from their inclusion indirectly. No new built-in resources or cmdlets have been added.

While there hasn't been much new core to DSC, there has been a huge focus on making DSC cross-platform. Early support for Linux that was released around the first edition of this book has been fleshed out into fully featured support. Not only can DSC run on Linux, but it also has a complete set of built-in DSC resources. Underpinning this is a version of PowerShell that can run on Linux.

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