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• Steven Murawski
Tips and Tricks

Going Deeper on DSC Resources

Desired State Configuration is a very new technology and declarative configuration management is a very young space yet. We (Microsoft and the community) are still figuring out the best structure for resources, composite configurations, and other structures. That said, there are certain viewpoints that I’ve come to, either from hands on experience or in watching how other communities (like the Puppet community or Chef community) handle similar problems. How Granular Should I Get?

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• Don Jones
PowerShell for Admins

My DSC Demo-Class Setup Routine

I think I’ve gotten my DSC classroom and demo setup ready. Understand that this isn’t meant to be production-friendly - it doesn’t automate some stuff because I want to cover that stuff in class by walking through it. But, I thought I’d share. I’ve basically made an ISO that I can carry into class, attach to a Win2012R2 VM and a Win81 VM, and run students through. The server VM is a DC in “company.

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• Steven Murawski
PowerShell for Admins

Building Desired State Configuration Custom Resources

Now that we’ve suitably rested, let’s get back to working with Desired State Configuration. Now, there are some basic features to work with that ship by default and the PowerShell team has been blogging some additional resources, but in order to do some really interesting thing with DSC, we’ll need to create our own resources. The High Points Overview Configuring the Pull Server (REST version) Creating Configurations (one of two, two of two) Configuring Clients Building Custom Resources (this post) Packaging Custom Resources Advanced Client Targeting The DSC Resource Structure DSC resources are (at their most basic) a PowerShell module.

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• John Mello

PhillyPoSH 03/06/2014 meeting summary and presentation materials

Bartek Bielawski gave a presentation entitled “OMI : PowerShell Everywhere”. During his talk Bartek discussed and gave examples of how to CIM cmdlets and CDXML commands to manage everything in your datacenter. A copy of his presentation materials are available on our GitHub Repository. We then had a script club where various members presented scripts they were working on A recording of this meeting has been posted to our YouTube channel; please note that there are some audio issues near the end of the recording.

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• Don Jones
PowerShell for Admins

The DSC Conversation Continues

Some lovely conversation on DSC over on Reddit… with some I wanted to perhaps offer an opinion on. From what I’ve seen, these are very common sentiments, and they definitely deserve… not argument or disagreement, but perhaps an alternate viewpoint. I’m not suggesting the commenters are wrong - but that maybe they’re not considering the entire picture. Certainly if you work with a superset of MS OSs (i.e. you do Linux also), then Puppet or something like it seems like a no brainer.

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• Don Jones
Announcements

Jobs: PowerShell Scripter Wanted

Told you this would eventually start happening ;). Matt Sullivan of Strategic Staffing contacted me with the following job posting; if you’re interested, reply to him directly at 781-347-5220. … My name is Matt Sullivan and I am a member of the Strategic Staffing Division at NTT DATA Inc., the sixth largest global IT integrator. We have more than 75,000 employees worldwide, offices in 40 different countires, and we are owned by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, the largest telecommunications company in the world.

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• Don Jones
PowerShell for Admins

The DSC Opportunity for ISVs

Desired State Configuration offers a number of immediate opportunities for independent software vendors (ISVs) who are smart enough to jump on board _now. _DSC currently suffers from a marked lack of tooling. That’s partially deliberate; MS obviously needs to deliver the functionality, and they may well rely on third parties or the System Center team to build tools on top of that functionality. But let’s explore some of the immediate opportunities.

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• Don Jones
Scripting Games

Julie's Comments: The Scripting Games – Winter 2014

This post comes to us from Julie Andreacola, one of the members of team Kitton Mittons, who won The Scripting Games - Winter 2014. You’re welcome to submit your thoughts about the Games as well!__ The 2014 Scripting Games are over and once again, it was a terrific experience. This was my third scripting games and I was blown away with all that I learned. The team approach was very appealing to me as I have been the PowerShell expert at my workplace so I was hoping to find a team where someone knew more than I did as I’m only intermediate in PowerShell skills.

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