Desired State Configuration (DSC) is a configuration management platform built into Windows for state management and compliance. DSC allows you to reliably and consistently manage the deployment states and the lifecycle of systems across various environments. DSC was designed to combine the system administration with automation to allow rapid growth and deployment iteration, making it one of the core services in the DevOps process for system automation. A single configuration can handle and enforce the system state while enabling the control to build an error-prone system for repetitive operations.

Azure Automation Account offers the automation service that complements the DSC state management and makes it easier to manage and set up the management environment. The service also supports importing existing DSC resources and assigning the configuration to the nodes in any cloud or on-premises data centers. The automation account replaces the pull server and provides its functionality at scale to automate and easily manage the configuration from a central location without managing your own pull server.

In this hands-on lab, you will work with Azure Automation Account to automate the configuration management on an Azure Virtual Machine using DSC.

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this beginner-level lab, you will be able to:

• Create an Azure Automation Account
• Understand the DSC Configuration
• Create and Compile the DSC Configuration
• Connect Nodes for DSC Configuration

Intended Audience

• Cloud Architects
• Data Engineers
• DevOps Engineers
• Software Engineers

Prerequisites

Familiarity with the following will be beneficial but is not required:

• PowerShell DSC on Windows
• Azure Virtual Machine

The following labs can be used to fulfill the prerequisite:

• Using PowerShell DSC on Windows
• Start Your First Azure Virtual Machine