Using the DSC Resource Kit – Hot Fixes may be needed

It's that time of year, and with some upcoming PowerShell classes to teach, I've been rebuilding my classroom lab environment. Turns out the client wants some DSC content, and accordingly loaded the latest build of the DSC Resource Kit. What a wonderful set of extensions – I love the speed at which these evolve.
But once I'd loaded the Resource Kit on the 'client' box, I was not able to see any of the new resources. I could see the modules containing the resources, but not the DSC Resources themselves:

But a quick question on both Spiceworks and PowerShell.org's forums and the answer was easy. My rebuild of the lab had installed the RTM version of Server 2012 R2. For the resources to become available, I had to install three specific hotfixes:

• Windows8.1-KB2894179-x64.msu
• Windows8.1-KB2894029-x64.msu
• Windows8.1-KB2883200-x64.msu

You can get all three from: http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=40749. OH – and be careful of the order you install them – read the KB article carefully!

del.icio.us Tags: PowerShell,DSC

PowerShell Desired State Configuration – More Resources

As noted on the PowerShell Team Blog,  Microsoft has published many new experimental resources for Windows PowerShell in the form of the DSC Resource Kit Wave 8. This latest release brings the number of rerources available to over ONE HUNDRED (138 for those of you who are counting – a 53% increase from the earlier release).

The sheer number of resoures now available is staggering – and I expect the pace of delivery here to continue as the team approach RTM for PowerShell 5 and Windows 10.

As Clifton Chenier sings: Laissez les bon temps roulez.

Technorati Tags: PowerShell V5,Powershell,DSC,Desired State Configuration,DSC Resource Kit

Desired State Configuration Resource Kit–Wave 6

The PowerShell team has just released an update to the DSC resource kit – bringing the total number of DSC resources to over 80! While the bulk of the resources in the resource kit are ‘experimental’ – they seem to me to be very stable (continuing the PowerShell team’s ability to ship rich, useful, and reliable beta code).

And even better, the PowerShell team seem to have gone back to their old roots in terms of time to market. They appear to be releasing as they develop (and long may this continue). Thus, the new SafeHarbor DSC resource, this was finished after Wave 5 was released but before Wave 6 was ready so the PowerShell team published it separately, then publish it (with updates and bug fixes) a few weeks later in the Wave 6 drop. I can’t tell you how good this feels after so long under the cone of silence.

This latest drop has some very interesting resources, including the xChrome and xFirefox resources that help to deploy these two browsers. The Group resource shipped with PowerShell 4 is updated to provide support for cross-domain account lookups as well as for UPN-formatted names. The new xRemoteDesktopAdmin resource enables. Additionally, Wave 6 has a number of bug fixes to earlier waves. Again – the ability to get these fixes quickly is both useful and much appreciated. 

The  DSC story is slowly coming clearer with both the July drop and these continuingly improving resources. And with Chef integrating with DSC, DSC’s future looks very rosy.  If you are looking to find out a bit more about DSC – I’ll be covering the basics on the PowerShell PowerCamp event in October.

del.icio.us Tags: DSC,DSC Resource Kit,PowerShell V5,PowerCamp

DSC For Linux

In a talk I'd never have imagined would happen, last week at TechEd US, Jeffrey Snover announced DSC for Linux. More information on that is provided on the Windows PowerShell team blog at: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powershell/archive/2014/05/19/announcing-windows-powershell-desired-state-configuration-for-linux.aspx

While I don't know Linux well enough to provide a detailed comment, the resources shown in that post do not look like the complete set. Nevertheless, this is a great start. I look forward to hearing more and seeing additional resources being added.

Technorati Tags: PowerShell,DSC,DSC for Linux

Desired State Configuration – DSC Resource Kit Wave 3

Desired State Configuration  is a feature of PowerShell V4, but one that was quite incomplete. In V4, IMHO, DSC is a really cool proof of concept. It works for a limited set of resources, but is not complete. Microsoft (and the community) need to, and are, publishing more resources. I suspect that V5 of PowerShell will see the completion or near completion of the resources needed by IT pros to manage most data centres.

To see that's in the resource kit, you can go to The TechNet Gallery and get it.

Technorati Tags: DSC Resource Kit,PowerShell V5

More Desired State Configuration Resources

On Boxing Day, the PowerShell team at Microsoft released some additional DSC (Desired State Configuration) resources, which they call the DSC Resource Kit Wave 1. These are as et of PowerShell moduels that contain both DSC Resource and sample configuration examples.

Microsoft initially shipped a number of built in resources for DSC (described on TechNet: here) as well as the ability to create your own custom resources (this is documented here).

The DSC Resource kit contains 8 new resources as follows:

 

Resource	Description
xComputer	Name a computer and add it to a domain/workgroup
xVHD	Create and managed VHDs
xVMHyperV	Create and manage a Hyper-V Virtual Machine
xVMSwitch	Create and manage a Hyper-V Virtual Switch
xDNSServerAddress	Bind a DNS Server address to one or more NIC
xIPAddress	Configure IPAddress (v4 and v6)
xDSCWebService	Configure DSC Service (aka Pull Server)
xWebsite	Deploy and configure a website on IIS

 

If you want to use the DSC Resource Kit you need to be running Windows 8.1 or Windows Server 2012 R2 with update KB2883200 (aka the GA Update Rollup).

DSC is an amazing feature of PowerShell 4, which just got even better!

Technorati Tags: PowerShell,DSC