Welcome to PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC), the new configuration management platform from Microsoft. We begin with a quote from Alice in Wonderland. Besides pertinent advice from the author, it is apropos of what DSC is at its very core. DSC, by the very simplest definition, allows you to write down the beginning, the middle, and the end of your deployment story. The second quote we see is from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and it is something to remember throughout this book. We will cover a lot of new concepts, some old concepts with new importance, and a lot of PowerShell. Don't panic; we'll get through fine.

This book will begin with the basics of PowerShell DSC, covering its architecture and many components. It will familiarize you with the set of Windows PowerShell language extensions and new Windows PowerShell commands that comprise DSC. Then, it will help you create custom DSC resources and work with DSC configurations with the help of practical examples. Finally, it will describe how to deploy a configuration data set using PowerShell DSC.

By the end of this book, you will be able to deploy a real-world application end to end.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• What is PowerShell DSC?
• Why do we need configuration management and what is DevOps?
• How does DSC help?
• A high-level overview of DSC
• DSC requirements
• DSC versions