In the previous post I made an attempt to introduce all of the moving parts of Desired State Configuration. This is an introduction to the basics of the ability it brings and I am going to describe how it works by walking through a very basic sample.
Just to avoid confusion, I am going to follow the pattern that you see in many of the blogs, with a lot of words around it. That said, it is rare to find a discussion of the MOF document itself. Most articles focus on generating the MOF configuration and then applying it. But I want you to be clear that there is a separation.
In my sample I am working in the PowerShell ISE instead of a console. It is still just a PowerShell session running in my security context.
I am going to assume that you know what localhost is (the machine where I am executing commands).
First of all, I have a PowerShell script (a series of commands) that creates a configuration in memory, writes that configuration to a MOF document, and then applies that configuration to localhost. MSFT refers to this configuration as configuration data at this point. It is not a configuration until it is written to the MOF.
Here is the sample that relates to this article:
Lets first look at lines 2 - 14. The special function 'configuration' is being used to declare a configuration named 'sample' surrounded in brackets.
Within the configuration 'sample' is one node element, it is named 'localhost'. This node specifies the computer(s) the configuration applies to. It must match / resolve to a computer name for the configuration to be applied. I could quickly get complex here and I am consciously trying to avoid that. Lets just keep this to the local computer at the moment*.
Within the node is a state of a DSC Resource. In this case the File resource which is built-in. I named this File state 'citrixFolder' (each defined state has a name, I will mention more about that later).
The File resource has parameters. I have defined that ensure is 'present' (it exists), the type as 'Directory' (so that it does not think I am defining a File), and the path. If I stated this I would say: "ensure that a directory named 'EasyButton' exists at the path C:\ProgramData\Citrix\EasyButton"
I then close each element of the configuration.
On line 17 I call the configuration named sample - the same way you would call a function.
What this does is generate a folder .\sample and within that a MOF document - .\sample\localhost.mof (note the '.\' in the path. Since I did not define a literal path for the output).
If I look at localhost.mof, I can see how this looks in the MOF format.
You can see that it was generated by me, and my workstation is named scooter, as well as the time and date, and the configuration that I defined for the node localhost.
Now, lets apply this configuration - make it a reality. That is where line 20 of the sample script comes into play.
I start the DSC Configuration engine and tell it to apply the configurations found at .\sample to the computer localhost. I force the action, I request verbose output, and I want to wait. Verbose is handy to show you what is happening. Waiting makes the configuration run within the session, instead of off on a job thread. Useful for debugging.
As you can see from the verbose output the first thing that happens is that the current state is evaluated. Then the local configuration manager decides if it needs to make a change. In this case the test of "is the directory C:\ProgramData\Citrix\EasyButton present" returned false. So the Set is called to make that change. The change returns a success and the local configuration manager moves on.
The behavior of the local configuration manager can be modified as well. Since a configuration can be applied (make the changes), or applied and enforced (make the changes and be sure nothing changes), or applied and monitored (make the changes and toss an event if something changes). More about that later.
* I am sure that some of you could imagine multiple node names, or multiple node elements (one big document defining multiple nodes) with the same document fed to them all. Then only the configuration that matches the computer name is applied.
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