It works by writing Powershell scripts that are then compiled into the “MOF” or Management Object Format. Basically it allows you to apply configuration to a machine in a predictable and repeatable manner - things like installing software, adding files, or making registry settings. If you’ve ever used Chef, Puppet, Ansible, Salt, etc., then you’ve seen what a config management tool can do. And, as it turns out, you can! Overview of Desired State Configuration (DSC)ĭSC is Microsoft’s version of a configuration management solution. One thing that caught my eye was the suite of tools called Azure Automation, and in particular the Desired State Configuration (DSC) capabilities of that platform.īut I don’t use Windows based operating systems for much (beyond playing games) - and so I decided to delve into the DSC on Azure Automation and see if you could use it to successfully configure Linux boxes too. So, Azure: there’s a lot of decent things going on there, and in fact, some of their management tools seem to be pretty awesome compared to the other two cloud providers I work with the most: Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Provider (GCP). Microsoft and I have never been what you would call close, but over the years I’ve grudgingly started to recognize their new “open-source friendly” stance as an attempt at a new start. Lately I’ve been doing a lot of Azure work - both professionally, and for my personal education. Part three: “Automating it all together” is located here. You can find part two: “Doing it in Azure” here. This is part one of a three part series on using DSC and Azure Automation to configure Linux.

Install dsc file ubuntu