Dsc… What Is It For, Really? [feedly]

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Dsc… What Is It For, Really?
// Chef Blog

This was originally posted on stevenmurawski.com.

An email recently came across one of the mailing lists I subscribe to. I wanted to share my answer here, because this is an important discussion.

Is DSC for Setup or Management?

Yes (notice, it's not an XOR)

In my opinion, DSC (and Chef) is for setup and the management of the structural configuration of the system. To directly address some of the questioners initial points:

Do I need to develop custom DSC resources (for example to create DFS folders and links) and apply a new configuration each time I have to create/or modify a DFS link? Or should I stick to the traditional system administration (I mean using PowerShell cmdlets or the GUI)?

Well, currently you'd have to implement a custom resource for DFS shares, but you don't need a custom resource per share. You would need to modify your configuration to add a new share, but modifying a configuration should be almost a non-event.

These Aren't Your Grandma's Shell Scripts

If you buy into the Configuration-As-Code or Infrastructure-As-Code concept, one of the first things you want to tackle is building a pipeline to deliver those configurations to your servers. Whether you use a pull server setup (my preference) or you push configurations out to individual nodes, having a solid delivery mechanism makes changing configurations not much more difficult than editing a file and checking into source control (which is way easier than the "traditional" approach). Setting up this pipeline IS work on the front end, but pays dividends in your ongoing maintenance of your environment.

I realize that it could be tempting to use DSC as a management system, but I think it is not a good use of DSC at all (please correct me if I'm wrong). Indeed, in order to manage a computer you have to modify (and reapply) the current config of the machine and that may take more time than using the usual cmdlets to get the work done.

If you are spending more time modifying the configuration (once you have resources and pipeline in place) than it would take to configure it on a server or series of servers, we need to sit down and have a chat.
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