Partial configurations and dependencies

DSC partial configurations allow you to deliver configurations in fragments to nodes. This is potentially a great feature to break up the large configuration documents you may have or help stagger the deployment of some distributed applications.

Support for cross-computer dependencies has also been added. This provides node-to-node synchronization without external input using CIM session connections between nodes. This means one configuration can wait for another to finish executing before executing itself. For example, a member server can wait to execute until the configuration on a domain controller has finished creating the domain the member server has to join.

Additional support for the DSC RefreshModes has been added to partial configurations. This allows you to specify whether a configuration is supposed to be pulled or pushed on an individual configuration level.

This feature is still in an experimental status at the time of writing this, so we are unable to accurately cover the feature in this book.