Jason Helmick walks through the installation and basics of Microsoft Desired State Configuration v3.0.0, helping IT professionals and developers automate infrastructure management using PowerShell.

Get Started with Microsoft Desired State Configuration v3.0.0

By Jason Helmick

Microsoft Desired State Configuration (DSC) v3.0.0 is a modern, cross-platform configuration management framework used by administrators and developers to declaratively define and enforce system states. DSC simplifies automation for both infrastructure and application deployment using configuration as code principles.

Key Terminology

DSC: Desired State Configuration v3.0.0
PSDSC: PowerShell Desired State Configuration (earlier versions v1.1, v2)

Installing DSC

On Windows: Install DSC from the Microsoft Store using winget, which enables automatic updates.

winget search DesiredStateConfiguration
winget install --id <insert-package-id> --source msstore

On Linux/macOS:
1. Download the latest release from PowerShell/DSC releases.
2. Expand the release archive.
3. Add the expanded archive folder to your PATH environment variable.

Getting Started with the `dsc` Command

Display command help:
```
dsc --help
```
Key options include tracing and output format settings, plus subcommands for managing configurations and resources (e.g., config, resource, schema).
Check version:
```
dsc --version
# Output: dsc 3.0.0
```
dsc command reference documentation

Accessing DSC Resources

List all installed DSC resources:
```
dsc resource list
```
Use adapters (e.g., classic PowerShell resources via Microsoft.Windows/WindowsPowerShell):
```
dsc resource list --adapter Microsoft.Windows/WindowsPowerShell
```
dsc resource command reference documentation

Managing Basic Configurations

Example YAML configuration to install IIS on Windows Server (using classic PowerShell resource WindowsFeature):

$schema: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/PowerShell/DSC/main/schemas/2024/04/config/document.json
resources:
- name: Use Windows PowerShell resources
  type: Microsoft.Windows/WindowsPowerShell
  properties:
    resources:
      - name: Web server install
        type: PSDesiredStateConfiguration/WindowsFeature
        properties:
          Name: Web-Server
          Ensure: Present

Apply configuration with:

dsc config get --file ./web.comfig.dsc.yaml

dsc config command reference documentation

Next Steps

Learn more about authoring and enhancements in DSC v3 through enhanced authoring documentation
Official DSCv3 documentation
Participate by providing feedback on the PowerShell DSC GitHub repository

Sr. Product Manager, PowerShell

Jason Helmick

This post appeared first on “Microsoft PowerShell Blog”. Read the entire article here