In WMF 5.0, DSC allows DSC configurations to be delivered in fragments and from multiple sources, then the LCM puts the fragments together before applying them as a single DSC configuration. This allows sharing the control of DSC configurations between teams or organizations within the same company. Team A could be in charge of the base operating system configuration, while Team B could be in charge of the exchange configuration, Team C SharePoint, and so on. Each partial configuration from each team is combined and applied to the target nodes that match the classification in the ConfigurationData. Furthermore, these partial DSC configurations could be pulled from different DSC pull servers, allowing different areas to house installation sources or other artifacts that can't be centrally located.

You can use partial DSC configuration in either push or pull modes or a combination of the two. The syntax of a partial DSC configuration is as follows:

PartialConfiguration ExamplePartialConfig
{
 Description = 'Configuration to add the example to the thing'
 RefreshMode = 'Push'
}

The RefreshMode decides whether Push or Pull is used, and the name of the block (here ExamplePartialConfig) has to match exactly the names of the DSC configurations that are pushed or pulled to the target node.

This is configured just like a DSC resource statement inside a WMF 5 DSC configuration block:

[DSCLocalConfigurationManager()]
configuration PartialConfigExample
{
 Node localhost
 {
 PartialConfiguration ExamplePartialConfig
 {
 Description = 'Configuration to add the example to the thing'
 RefreshMode = 'Push'
 }
 }
}

The configuration and use of either Push or Pull will be covered in Chapter 5, Pushing DSC Configurations.