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New Quick Start – Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) on AWS

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PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) is a powerful tool for system administrators. Introduced as part of Windows Management Framework 4.0, it helps to automate system setup and maintenance for Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Linux environments. It can install or remove server roles and features, manage registry settings, environment variables, files, directories, and services, and processes. It can also manage local users and groups, install and manage MSI and EXE packages, and run PowerShell scripts. DSC can discover the system configuration on a given instance, and it can also fix a configuration that has drifted away from the desired state.

We have just published a new Quick Start Reference Deployment to make it easier for you to take advantage of PowerShell Desired State Configuration in your AWS environment.

This new document will show you how to:

  • Use AWS CloudFormation and PowerShell DSC to bootstrap your servers and enterprise applications from scratch.
  • Deploy a highly available PowerShell DSC pull server environment on AWS.
  • Detect and remedy configuration drift after your application stack has been deployed.

This detailed (24 page) document contains all of the information that you will need to get started. The deployed pull server is robust and fault-tolerant; it includes a pair of web servers and Active Directory domain controllers. It can be accessed from on-premises devices and from instances running in the AWS Cloud.

Jeff;

Modified 2/11/2021 – In an effort to ensure a great experience, expired links in this post have been updated or removed from the original post.
Jeff Barr

Jeff Barr

Jeff Barr is Chief Evangelist for AWS. He started this blog in 2004 and has been writing posts just about non-stop ever since.