PowerShell Team

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DSC - PowerShell Team

DSC Resource Kit Wave 3

March 28, 2014 Mar 28, 2014 03/28/14
PowerShell Team
In September, Microsoft released PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) with twelve built in resources.   Three months later (December), we added eight more resources with Wave One of the DSC Resource Kit.   Two months after that (February), we totaled fourteen additional resources with Wave Two of the DSC Resource Kit.  ...

Want to Automatically Configure Your Machines Using DSC at Initial Boot-up?

February 28, 2014 Feb 28, 2014 02/28/14
PowerShell Team
Often times, IT Pros want to automate software installation and configuration upon a machine’s initial boot-up. This blog will walk you through how to use Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) to do this. We will show you how to prepare and inject DSC configurations into your bootable media (such as VHDs), so that they are...

Reusing Existing Configuration Scripts in PowerShell Desired State Configuration

February 25, 2014 Feb 25, 2014 02/25/14
PowerShell Team
You are an expert in PowerShell DSC (or maybe not an expert, just someone playing around with configurations in DSC) and have already written fairly large and complex configurations for configuring your environment/data center. Everything is working well and you are a great fan of DSC. There’s only one problem: your work is complicated...

Configuring a SQL High Availability Group with DSC

February 13, 2014 Feb 13, 2014 02/13/14
PowerShell Team
Let's use DSC to configure something complicated!  In past blogs, we’ve shown you how to use Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) to configure relatively simple systems.  However, the technologies you deal with on a day to day basis can sometimes become complicated.  Don’t worry, DSC can still help ...

DSC Diagnostics Module– Analyze DSC Logs instantly now!

February 11, 2014 Feb 11, 2014 02/11/14
PowerShell Team
  Have you ever witnessed a DSC Configuration run where you had no idea about what it might have done behind the scenes? Well, then your worries end here! During any DSC Operation, the DSC engine writes into windows event logs, which are like bread crumbs that the engine leaves along the way during any execution. If you read the blog ...

Need more DSC Resources? Announcing DSC Resource Kit Wave 2

February 7, 2014 Feb 7, 2014 02/7/14
PowerShell Team
Good news everyone! Starting today, you can use Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) to configure Active Directory and SQL Server (including High Availability Groups). We are pleased to release the next wave of the DSC Resource Kit – one that enables you to start using DSC to solve your real world problems and scenarios. ...

How to enable Updatable Help for your PowerShell Module

February 4, 2014 Feb 4, 2014 02/4/14
PowerShell Team
PowerShell 3.0 lets the user update Help content on a per module basis. In this article, I will explain how you can enable this for your own PowerShell module. Prerequisites: Have a new (script/binary) module, help content for the cmdlets of the module, and a server where the help content is located. For this particular exercise I will be ...

Want to secure credentials in Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration?

January 31, 2014 Jan 31, 2014 01/31/14
PowerShell Team
As you start using Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC), you might need to specify credentials for resources. In a previous post we showed you how to define a resource that has a credential property.  In this post, I’ll discuss how to properly encrypt credentials when used in a DSC configuration. Prerequisites First, ...

Separating “What” from “Where” in PowerShell DSC

January 9, 2014 Jan 9, 2014 01/9/14
PowerShell Team
As you already know we introduced PowerShell Desired State Configuration to the world at our TechEd NA 2013 Session. The session also introduced the notion of structural configuration (what) and environmental configuration (where) (at the 25:50 min mark). Structural configuration defines what is needed and does not change based on the ...

Using Event Logs to Diagnose Errors in Desired State Configuration

January 3, 2014 Jan 3, 2014 01/3/14
PowerShell Team
Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC), just like any other Windows software, records errors and events in logs that can be viewed from the Event Viewer. However, the trick lies in effectively parsing these logs, so we know exactly why a particular operation failed. In this blog, we explain where the DSC event logs are, and how ...