PowerShell V4 DSC

PowerShell V4 was released as part of WMF 4 on October 24, 2013, and contained the first released version of DSC. Even though this was the first release of DSC, it is still referred to as being version 4 of DSC. While confusing at first, this is largely something you can ignore, as versioning of DSC resources is a more frequent point of variance.

As the first release, this version of DSC largely focuses on bringing a minimally viable product to the market for Microsoft. Microsoft is a little late to the DevOps game with DSC, as there are several toolsets out there that have been in use for many years. Puppet and Chef are the most notable, but there are many others. What sets DSC apart here is that it is not an add-on or separate product; it's a core part of the Windows OS and can be used by other tools as much as it can be used by itself.

The first version contains most features needed out of the gate to start automating your deployment process, but only the built-in DSC resources were available and were lacking in addressing commonly used products such as IIS, SQL, or Exchange. In the early days, Microsoft relied heavily on the community to expand its DSC resource list, which resulted in mixed success. Microsoft released a set of DSC resources it authored to the community in batches to address the gap. The combination of community and Microsoft contributions has greatly expanded the reach of DSC, and it has been expanding it ever since.