What is PowerShell DSC?

Do you have some software that needs to be installed in a certain order? Software with special configuration steps? Software along with some security policies that must be applied to every server? How about ensuring that a set of services are never enabled to start? Have you ever written scripts to handle this kind of work but found them brittle because of changes in software from release to release? Needed to make these changes on dozens or hundreds of servers repeatedly on schedule? Ever had someone change something and have your script break because the state is not what you expected? These and many more scenarios are handled by DSC.

PowerShell DSC is a new management platform in Windows PowerShell that enables the deployment and management of configuration data for systems and software services and the management of the environment in which these services run. DSC allows you to define the current state of a machine and ensure that the machine is always in that state.

What we mean by state here is everything that is on that machine, including the operating system and software installed, all the configuration settings for the OS and software, and any files or process that need to be present or set with specific content; the list goes on. Whether you considered this earlier or not, all this makes up the configuration of your system. DSC is designed to help you deal with all this configuration data and execute it consistently and repeatedly.