Happy 10th anniversary to the DSC Resource Kit! Wave 10 is now available on TechNet and in the PowerShell Gallery.
We have a few new resources this month and a number of significant bug fixes made to existing resources that are critical in our march towards stability and robustness. All in all, there are 8 new DSC resources across 5 modules and bug fixes made across 10 modules.
This means we're now up to a total of 180 resources, enabling declarative deployment, configuration, and management of Active Directory, Azure VMs, Certificate Services, SQL Server, disk drives, DNS, file shares, Failover clusters, Internet Explorer, Exchange, web applications, Hyper-V, networking, Just Enough Administration, DNS, Remote Desktop Services, the System Center products (SCDPM, SCOM, SCSMA, SCSPF, SCSR, SCVMM), and more, all using DSC. As our first release of 2015, we're excited for what's to come!
Questions, Comments?
If you're looking into using PowerShell DSC, but are blocked by issues with current resources, or a lack of resources, let us know in the comments or the TechNet QA Section.
What's in this Wave?
This wave includes a few additions as well as some bug fixes that continue the march towards more stability and robustness. Here’s a list of fixes and additions:
Name | New, or Updated | What was added or changed? |
xDisk | New | Introducing a set of DSC resources for initializing and formatting disk drives:
|
| xOU
| New | Introducing a set of DSC resources for managing Active Directory organizational units:
|
xReleaseManagement | New | Introducing a set of DSC resources that extend Release Management for Visual Studio:
|
xAzurePack | Updated |
|
xBitlocker | Updated |
|
xComputerManagement | Updated |
|
xExchange | Updated |
|
xSCDPM | Updated |
|
xSCOM | Updated |
|
xSCSMA | Updated |
|
xSCSPF | Updated |
|
xSCSR | Updated |
|
xSCVMM | Updated |
|
xSQLServer | Updated |
|
For more details on the changes, and new resources, see the TechNet Script Center pages for the individual modules.
Going forward, we will only be releasing new versions of these resources via the PowerShell Gallery. We recommend that you download and install WMF 5.0 with PowerShellGet to update these resources to their latest versions (from an elevated PowerShell prompt):
Update-Module
If there is an issue you are particularly concerned about, watch the version number in the PowerShell Gallery for updates to that particular resource.
As with the previous resource kits, all the resources in the Resource Kit are experimental. The “x” prefix in the names stands for experimental – which means these resources are provided AS IS and are not supported through any Microsoft support program or service. We will monitor the TechNet pages, take feedback, and will do our best to provide fixes moving forward.
Also, don’t forget to check out the community versions of many resources on PowerShell.Org's GitHub repository.
Details
All of these resources are available via the TechNet Script Center right here. Instructions for installation are included with the various modules.
In addition, these resources are available via the PowerShell Gallery. If you have installed Windows Management Framework (WMF) 5.0, you can quickly see what is available by using the command:
Find-DscResource
After installing the modules, you can discover all of the resources available to your local system by running:
Get-DscResource
Renaming Guidelines
When making changes to these resources, we urge the following practice:
1. Update the following names by replacing MSFT with your company/community name and replacing the “x” with "c" (short for "Community") or another prefix of your choice:
a. Module name (ex: xWebAdministration becomes cWebAdministration)
b. Folder name (ex: MSFT_xWebsite becomes Contoso_cWebsite)
c. Resource Name (ex: MSFT_xWebsite becomes Contoso_cWebsite)
d. Resource Friendly Name (ex: xWebsite becomes cWebsite)
e. MOF class name (ex: MSFT_xWebsite becomes Contoso_cWebsite)
f. Filename for the <resource>.schema.mof (ex: MSFT_xWebsite.schema.mof becomes Contoso_cWebsite.schema.mof)
2. Update module and metadata information in the module manifest
3. Update any configuration that uses these resources
We reserve resource and module names without prefixes ("x" or "c") for future use (e.g. "MSFT_WebAdministration" or "Website"). If the next version of Windows Server ships with a "Website" resource, we don't want to break configurations that use any community modifications. Please keep a prefix such as "c" on all community modifications. As specified in the license, you may copy or modify this resource as long as they are used on the Windows Platform.
Requirements
Note: The DSC Resource Kit requires at least Windows 8.1 or Windows Server 2012 R2 with update KB2883200 (aka the GA Update Rollup) installed. You can check whether it is installed by running the following command:
C:\> Get-HotFix -Id KB2883200
Source Description HotFixID InstalledBy InstalledOn
------ ----------- -------- ----------- -----------
MyMachine Update KB2883200 MyMachine\Admini... 9/30/2013 12:00:00AM
For most modules, you can use them on supported down-level versions of Windows by installing WMF 4.0. Refer to these previous blog posts for more information on WMF 4.0 and issues with partial installation. A few modules will require the use of WMF 5.0, and all modules should work with WMF 5.0. You can confirm the requirements for each module on the individual blog topics that provide the details for the module, as well as via the HTML documentation included with each module.