The DSC project blueprint or how to start a DSC project the right way

Microsoft’s “Release Pipeline Model” whitepaper describes a new era of how IT systems should be managed nowadays. DSC is just one tool in a long tool chain to control your infra through code via a CI/CD release pipeline. We present a working PoC that summarizes the learning of 4 hard years.

The documentation available around DSC quite often drives people into the wrong direction. At the very beginning things go quite well but if the requirements are getting more complex, they realize that configuration management, monitoring and reporting do not scale. Hashtables are not designed to store hundreds of computer configuration items, roles, location, etc. This session tells the story about a community open source project that has gone over two years to something like a blueprint for new DSC projects in pull mode. It explains how DSC works in a world described in the Microsoft’s Release Pipeline Model whitepaper. Not only DSC is part of the story but also Datum, Azure DevOps, JEA and SQL reporting for DSC. If this is too much for starters, the DSC part of the project is also applicable for DSC push scenarios and does not require anything but DSC and Datum. If you are planning to introduce DSC in your environment or enhance an existing implementation, attend this session to learn about best practices learned in the field and be able to describe and realize an infrastructure release pipeline that adds trust, scalability, flexibility and speed.

This session touches quite some technologies and is based on the joint work done by Gael Colas, Jan-Hendrik Peters and Raimund Andree published at https://github.com/DscCommunity/DscWorkshop. Going through the material in 45 is possible but quite tough. If you have longer timeslots, I would appreciate spending a bit more time on this.