DSC Tools- Hopefully Making DSC Easier

Desired State Configuration (DSC) is definitely one of the coolest features of WMF 4.0. This article however is not about what DSC is or how to implement it - there are already many great introductions to DSC out there. If you’re new to DSC I’d suggest you take a look at the great free e-book from PowerShell.org: The DSC Book.

I’ve been working with DSC for several months now in my lab environments and I really love it. But it can be a little bit tricky to set up, with lots of steps and things to remember (or forget in my case). It is very easy to miss a step and spend many hours trying to figure out what went wrong - I know this from experience.

I’m certain in the future that Microsoft and/or other tool providers will provide easier methods of implementing DSC, but at the moment it is still a fairly manual process. There are products like Chef (see Chef for Windows) that are going to use DSC to provide configuration of Windows operating systems (and perhaps non-Windows as well), but as of writing this these tools aren’t yet available.

So, after about the 20th time of setting up DSC, I figured that it might be an idea to write some simple tools that could make my life a little bit easier. With that in mind I created a PowerShell module (supporting WMF 4.0 and above) that provides some helper functions and configurations that make setting up DSC Pull Servers and configuring Local Configuration Manager (LCM) on the nodes slightly less painful.

With all of the above in mind I set about creating a module that would combine all of these steps into simple PS cmdlets that could be used without having to remember exactly how to do things such as creating an LCM configuration file for a Pull Server or something like that. This in theory would leave more time for the really fun part about DSC: creating node configuration files and resources.

For example, to set up a DSC Pull Server (in HTTP mode) there are several steps required:

1. Download and Install the DSC Resources your configurations will use to the PS modules folder.
2. Publish the DSC Resources to a folder in your Pull Server and create checksum files for them.
3. Create a DSC Configuration file for your Pull Server(s).
4. Run the DSC Configuration file for your Pull Server(s) into to create MOF files.
5. Push the DSC Configuration MOF files to the LCM on the Pull Servers.

These steps are easy to understand and perform, but if you don’t do them often you will quickly forget exactly how to do it. I found myself referring back to long sets of instructions (found many places online) every time I did it.

To perform the above steps using the DSCTools module simply requires the following cmdlets to be executed on the computer that will become the DSC Pull Server. [sourcecode language=“powershell”] # Download the DSC Resource Kit and install it to the local DSC Pull Server Install-DSCResourceKit

# Copy all the resources up to the local DSC Pull Server (zipped and with a checksum file). Publish-DSCPullResources

# Install a DSC Pull Server to the local machine Enable-DSCPullServer [/sourcecode] The cmdlets can be executed on a computer other than the Pull Server by providing ComputerName and Credential parameters.

Like most PS cmdlets, you can also provide additional configuration options to them as well. For example, you might want your DSC Pull Server resources folder to be placed in a different location, in which case you could provide the commands with the PullServerResourcePath parameter: [sourcecode language=“powershell”] # Copy all the resources up to the local DSC Pull Server (zipped and with a checksum file). Publish-DSCPullResources -PullServerResourcePath e:\DSC\Resources

# Install a DSC Pull Server to the local machine Enable-DSCPullServer -PullServerResourcePath e:\DSC\Resources [/sourcecode] Most DSCTools cmdlets have many other parameters for controlling most aspects of the functions such as the type of Pull Server to install (HTTP, HTTPS or SMB), the location where files should be stored. If these parameters aren’t passed then the default values will be used.

If you’re lazy (like me) and don’t want to have to pass the same parameters in to every cmdlet, you can change the default values by overriding script variables once the module has been loaded. For example you might always want your Pull Servers to use a configuration path of e:\DSC\Configuration. You could pass the PullServerConfigurationPath parameter to each cmdlet that needs it (which could be many), or you could just change the value of the $Script:DSCTools_DefaultPullServerConfigurationPath variable: [sourcecode language=“powershell”] # Set the default location where all Pull Server cmdlets will put DSC Pull Server configuration files. $Script:DSCTools_DefaultPullServerConfigurationPath = ’e:\DSC\Configuration'

# Copy all the resources up to the local DSC Pull Server (zipped and with a checksum file). Publish-DSCPullResources

# Install a DSC Pull Server to the local machine Enable-DSCPullServer [/sourcecode]

Configuring a node to use the Pull Server also used to be a more complicated process (not counting the actual creation of the node configuration file):

1. Copy the configuration MOF file to the Pull Server.
2. Generate a checksum file for the configuration.
3. Configure the LCM on the node to pull its configuration from the Pull Server.
4. Trigger the node to immediately pull it’s DSC configuration from the Pull Server (rather than wait 30 minutes).

This process can now be performed by just two cmdlets: [sourcecode language=“powershell”] # Set up the node NODE01 to pull from the pull server on machine MYDSCSERVER. # The MOF file for this node will be looked for in: # $Home\Documents\NODE01.MOF # This can be configured. Start-DSCPullMode ` -ComputerName ‘NODE01’ -PullServerURL ‘http://MYDSCSERVER:8080/PSDSCPullServer.svc’

# Force the node to pull its configuration from the Pull Server Invoke-DSCCheck -ComputerName NODE01 [/sourcecode] The second cmdlet, Invoke-DSCCheck, is not even required if you’re willing to wait for the automatic DSC check to occur (every 30 minutes or so).

Once again, this module is all about laziness. So, why configure one node at a time when you can configure lots of them all at once. Many of the cmdlets in this module support a Nodes parameter, which take an array of hash tables. This array of hash tables will contain the definitions of the nodes that need to be set up or have other procedures performed on them (e.g. invoke a configuration check).

For example, to configure seven different nodes for using a DSC Pull Server (with different configurations even) would require the following code: [sourcecode language=“powershell”] $Nodes = @( ` @{Name=‘NODE01’;Guid=‘115929a0-61e2-41fb-a9ad-0cdcd66fc2e1’;RebootIfNeeded=$true;MofFile="$PSScriptRoot\Configuration\Config_StandardSrv\NODE01.MOF"} , ` @{Name=‘NODE02’;Guid=‘115929a0-61e2-41fb-a9ad-0cdcd66fc2e2’;RebootIfNeeded=$true;MofFile="$PSScriptRoot\Configuration\Config_StandardSrv\NODE02.MOF"} , ` @{Name=‘NODE03’;Guid=‘115929a0-61e2-41fb-a9ad-0cdcd66fc2e3’;RebootIfNeeded=$true;MofFile="$PSScriptRoot\Configuration\Config_StandardSrv\NODE03.MOF"} , ` @{Name=‘NODE04’;Guid=‘115929a0-61e2-41fb-a9ad-0cdcd66fc2e4’;RebootIfNeeded=$true;MofFile="$PSScriptRoot\Configuration\Config_StandardSrv\NODE04.MOF"} , ` @{Name=‘NODE05’;Guid=‘115929a0-61e2-41fb-a9ad-0cdcd66fc2e5’;RebootIfNeeded=$true;MofFile="$PSScriptRoot\Configuration\Config_StandardSrv\NODE05.MOF"} , ` @{Name=‘NODE06’;Guid=‘115929a0-61e2-41fb-a9ad-0cdcd66fc2e6’;RebootIfNeeded=$true;MofFile="$PSScriptRoot\Configuration\Config_StandardSrv\NODE06.MOF"} , ` @{Name=‘NODE07’;Guid=‘115929a0-61e2-41fb-a9ad-0cdcd66fc2e7’;RebootIfNeeded=$true;MofFile="$PSScriptRoot\Configuration\Config_StandardSrv\NODE07.MOF"} )

Start-DSCPullMode ` -Nodes $Nodes ` -PullServerURL ‘http://MYDSCSERVER:8080/PSDSCPullServer.svc’

Invoke-DSCCheck -Nodes $Node [/sourcecode] The nodes array could even be populated from a CSV file to make it even easier.

Once the new PowerShell Gallery is available (for public consumption) I’ll upload the module there. But in the mean time it is available on the Microsoft Script Center here:

DSCTools on Script Center

If you want to see some more example files (as well as sample node config files I’ve used in testing the module) you can check out the GitHub repository for the module:

DSCTools on GitHub

The GitHub repository contains additional files not available in the download from the script center including details examples and test configuration files. It is also contained within a Visual Studio 2013 solution so if you’re using VS2013 and the PowerShell VS add-in you can easily load it up.

Over the next few weeks I am planning to update the module so that some of the functions will create the node configuration MOF files by running the actual configuration PS1 files (provided in a nodes array or as parameters). This will eliminate another step when updating any node configuration files.

After creating this module it occurred to me that there might be an even better way to implement a DSC set up: using a basic DSC system XML configuration file that could define all the pull servers and nodes. This XML file could be passed to a cmdlet that could configure all the applicable servers and nodes from the content. So this is the next long-term goal I have for this module.

If anyone out there finds this module useful and has a request for additional features or finds a (shudder) bug, please let me know!