Next Iteration of DSC

DSC
1

So, it seems (as usual) that I’m a bit late on jumping on the DSC bandwagon. I came to PowerShell to do my job better and more efficiently. One of the platforms that I learned about was DSC for a configuration management platform to manage Windows Servers and Windows 10 boxes.

The problem that I am trying to solve is, I’m apart of a 4-man team and usually its one of my responsibilities to build out laptops for end users. I already have a WDS server that I can send images to laptops with. I was hoping to use DSC to complete the configuration phase of the laptop buildout, then going to Chocolatey for applications and such.

However, I have found out that Microsoft has discontinued support of the HTTPS Push server internally, and suggests we go to Azure Automate for the present supported cases. We’re still in PoC phase before we spend any money on something that we aren’t for sure is going to work for us.

Boiling all of this non-sense down, if internal DSC isn’t supported anymore, what are my other solutions except for Azure Automate? Ansible? Chef? What is the best tool for this job? If something isn’t very clear, please feel free to ask clarifying questions.

Glad to be back in A community.

Thanks,

2

Correct me if i’m wrong, but DSC is primary targeted at Servers and Infrastructure.

SCCM/MDT/Intune are the tools for Client Configuration and Deployment.

Have you checked out Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT)?

3

I believe you are correct that DSC was primarily targeted for servers, but I assumed that it could also be adapted to clients as well.

I’ve tried working with MDT, but just not getting it. Do you know of any resources I could check out?

4

I haven’t used DSC much at work, but I can give a thumbs up for Ansible, coverage for Windows is increasing in Ansible.

5

Checkout Deploy a Windows 10 image using MDT (Windows 10) - Windows Deployment | Microsoft Docs

6

For Windows 10, Microsoft’s solution is going to be Autopilot + Intune. You’ll get more value out of Intune/EMS subscriptions than you would paying the per-node cost just to do configuration management with Azure Automation.

You could technically push DSC configurations at Windows 10 devices if you deployed them as a Win32 app in Intune using a custom detection method but you’d be better off using as much of the native configuration options as possible.