Blog
Welcome to the blog section! Here you’ll find posts from various sources, covering topics around DSC. Feel free to explore or contribute your own posts directly to the posts folder.
The Three Straightforward Ways To Get Microsoft's DSC v3 Input Properties
Microsoft DSC v3 introduced command-based and non-command-based DSC resources (adapter). This fundamental change has changed the way you can retrieve the input properties. Typically, you would use the Get-DscResource command to discover the available properties on script-based and class-based DSC resources. Because Microsoft DSC v3 is a command-line interface (CLI) application that uses JSON and YAML, retrieving the input properties doesn’t work using the command mentioned earlier. This blog post was posted on Medium.
April 15, 2025
DSC v3 Oversimplified: Three Ways to Author and Invoke Configuration Documents
DSC’s v3 engine isn’t the only way to invoke a configuration document. Nor does the authoring have to happen purely in DSC v3 format. Configuration documents for DSC v3 are written in YAML and JSON. If you come from the old days, that can surprise you. Configuration documents were originally solely written in PowerShell. DSC v3, or now changed to Microsoft DSC 3.0, does it differently. And for several reasons. One of those is the fact that DSC in itself is an executable that can be executed from orchestration tools. Think of Azure Machine Configuration, which, quite frankly, was also available for DSC v2.
April 4, 2025
Optimizing Your DSC V3 Authoring Experience in VSCode
The world around DSC has changed significantly; only some of the components to talk to the DSC engine are written in PowerShell. Instead, the authoring of configurations is written in YAML or JSON. Previous versions of DSC were closed and you couldn’t have a look under the hood of the engine. Now, DSC V3 is totally rewritten and open-sourced on GitHub. The engine itself doesn’t require a Local Configuration Manager (LCM) anymore.
June 1, 2024
A first look at Desired State Configuration v3
On many popular forums, the question arose “is Desired State Configuration still alive”? If you look at the statistics on the PowerShell Gallery, many popular DSC Resources are still being updated frequently. You might also not be aware that the PowerShell team has released the alpha version of DSCv3, which is publicly available. This blog post was posted on Medium.
October 7, 2023