DSC Setup and Demo Scripts I recently set up a virtual machine to use for Desired State Configuration (DSC) demos. I wanted to make the demo-ing fairly brainless, as DSC requires a number of setup steps to get a pull server running. So I took some demo scripts Microsoft offered from TechEd 2013, …
As you probably know, the Install-WindowsFeature (used to be Add-WindowsFeature; that’s now an alias to Install-) can add Windows roles and features from PowerShell. If your server doesn’t have the installer source on the local disk, then the cmdlet will default to grabbing it from …
Consider the following: $computers = Get-ADComputer -filter * -searchBase "ou=test,dc=company,dc=pri" foreach ($computer in $computers) { write-host "computer $computer" $result = Do-Something -computername $computer Write-Host "$($result.property) and $($result.value)" …
One of the most important tasks for the** **DBAs is to ensure that there is a maintenance plan to recover data from a given disaster. As a DBA we need to design a maintenance plan according to our scenario and business requirements. Do we want to be able to recover data at any point of time? How …
Once we have our pull server in place and we’re starting to create configurations, we need to set up our client nodes to be able to connect to the pull server and how we want the node to behave. The High Points Overview Configuring the Pull Server (REST version) Creating Configurations (one of …
Well, it isn’t your enemy, of course, but it’s definitely a tricky little beast. Get-Content is quickly becoming my nemesis, because it’s sucking a lot of PowerShell newcomers into its insidious little trap. Actually, the real problem is that most newcomers don’t really …
One thing that’s often very confusing about PowerShell is the difference between the shell itself - what I’ll call the engine in this article - and the application that hosts the engine. You see, you as a human being can’t really interact directly with PowerShell’s engine. …
Ok, let’s get back to creating a DSC configuration. If you haven’t read the last post in this series, go back and do that now, I’ll wait. Now with that out of the way, let’s get back to it… The High Points Overview Configuring the Pull Server (REST version) Creating …
Now that’s a title! We’ve worked through my reasoning as to why I want Desired State Configuration (DSC) and how to build a pull server. Today and in the next post we are going to look at how to create configurations which describe how our target systems are supposed to work. The High …
Quick recap, I’m working through a series of posts about the Desired State Configuration infrastructure that I’m building at Stack Exchange, including some how-to’s. The High Points Overview Configuring the Pull Server (REST version) (this post) Creating Configurations (one of two, …
