Microsoft announced the CTP release of Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration for Linux

When I was speaking at DevOpsDays India and demonstrating Windows PowerShel DSC (6 months ago), several people in the room had a laugh as I’d mentioned Microsoft and OpenSource. I’d mentioned that DSC is based on standards and it will, one day, be extended to Unix and Linux platforms. I spoke about configuration management of your entire data centre based on standards like CIM and WS-MAN. And, that is available today!

If you were at TechEd or watched it online or followed #msteched on Twitter, you would have noticed the buzz around an Open Source announcement by Jeffrey Snover. Microsoft released a CTP version of DSC for Linux on GitHub.

Prerequisites

• Development tools (g++, GNU make)
• OMI 1.0.8 (https://collaboration.opengroup.org/omi/documents/30532/omi-1.0.8.tar.gz)
• Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration for Linux source (https://github.com/MSFTOSSMgmt/WPSDSCLinux/releases/download/v1.0.0-CTP/PSDSCLinux.tar.gz)
• Python 2.5 or later and python-devel

Building OMI 1.0.8 requires the following packages:

• pam-devel
• openssl-devel

This initial CTP release has only a few DSC resources available!

• nxFile – manage files and directory state
• nxScript – runs script blocks on target nodes
• nxUser – manages Linux users
• nxGroup – manages Linux groups
• nxService – manages Linux services (System-V, Upstart, SystemD)

Hey, this is open sourced. So, let us build this together!

A complete step-by-step guidance for this is available at: http://blogs.technet.com/b/privatecloud/archive/2014/05/19/powershell-dsc-for-linux-step-by-step.aspx

This is really an exciting time and I will be closely following the development and writing my observations and learning here. Watch this space.