Desired State Configuration

Desired State Configuration is a new configuration management platform from Microsoft built as an extension to PowerShell. DSC was originally launched as part of WMF 4.0. It is available as part of WMF 4.0 and 5.0 for all Windows Server operating systems above Windows 2008 R2. WMF 5.0 is available out-of-the-box on Windows Server 2016 and Windows 10. It uses the core infrastructure of Web Services for Management (WSMan) and Windows Remote Management (WinRM) for its working. It is an extension to PowerShell and adds language constructs, features, and cmdlets for easy authoring and execution of configuration across heterogeneous environments.

DSC is a declarative language enabling Infrastructure as Code by representing and describing the entire infrastructure and its configuration through code. DSC configuration files are simple .ps1 script files that can be stored in source control repositories for version control.

DSC represents the target state and configuration...