Skip to main content

Desired state configuration – xComputer domain join


PowershellContact

Here we go again. This is just a short post on how to use the resource to join a computer to the domain. Steps we will perform:

  1. Download the resource from here. Follow the instructions to add it to the modules folder on you target computer.
  2. Create configuration data
  3. Build a very short configuration


Here is the configuration data we will use:


$ConfigData = @{  
   AllNodes = @(       
        @{    
            NodeName = "*"                    
            PSDscAllowPlainTextPassword = $true
         }
        @{    
            NodeName = "localhost"      
        }
);
   NonNodeData = @{
            domainName = "try.local"
      }
   } 


A few points to note here:
  1. We have a node called “*”. It is kind of a “wildcard”, however wildcards are not supported in DSC. All key/values you specify in this node, will get inherited by all nodes. That is why I do not need to specify the PSDscAllowPlainTextPassword for my node localhost.

  2. There is something called NonNodeData. Well as the name implies, it is configuration data that is not related specifically to any node. The data is available for all nodes. i have added the FQDN for my lab domain here.

Moving on to the configuration:



configuration DomainJoin
{
Param(
        [pscredential] $domainCred
)

    node $allnodes.nodename
    {
        xComputer join
        {
            Name = $allnodes.nodename
            DomainName = $ConfigurationData.NonNodeData.domainName
            Credential = $domainCred
        }
    }
}


As you can see, we are using the NonNodeData in the configuration and giving the configuration the domain name to join. Here is a screenshot of the applied configuration:

image

That is all there is to it.

Cheers

Comments

  1. Wont every computer this is run on be renamed to localhost?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi,

    No, it will not. DSC may consist of 2 parts. Configuration data (input) and the configuration itself. The separation is there to be able to scale the configuration to the level you want. The configuration data specifies the input/information your configuration (DSC) needs to execute, like domain name, credentials and what else. When you compile the configuration, that is run it, you pass in the configuration containing the name of the nodes this configuration should apply to. I have specified "localhost" as one node and the xComputer DSC resource will execute on the localhost and join it to the domain "try.local" with the current computername. Hope that explains it?

    Regards

    Tore

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Serialize data with PowerShell

Currently I am working on a big new module. In this module, I need to persist data to disk and reprocess them at some point even if the module/PowerShell session was closed. I needed to serialize objects and save them to disk. It needed to be very efficient to be able to support a high volume of objects. Hence I decided to turn this serializer into a module called HashData. Other Serializing methods In PowerShell we have several possibilities to serialize objects. There are two cmdlets you can use which are built in: Export-CliXml ConvertTo-JSON Both are excellent options if you do not care about the size of the file. In my case I needed something lean and mean in terms of the size on disk for the serialized object. Lets do some tests to compare the different types: (Hashdata.Object.ps1) You might be curious why I do not use the Export-CliXML cmdlet and just use the [System.Management.Automation.PSSerializer]::Serialize static method. The static method will generate t

Toying with audio in powershell

Controlling mute/unmute and the volume on you computer with powershell. Add-Type -TypeDefinition @' using System.Runtime.InteropServices; [Guid("5CDF2C82-841E-4546-9722-0CF74078229A"), InterfaceType(ComInterfaceType.InterfaceIsIUnknown)] interface IAudioEndpointVolume { // f(), g(), ... are unused COM method slots. Define these if you care int f(); int g(); int h(); int i(); int SetMasterVolumeLevelScalar(float fLevel, System.Guid pguidEventContext); int j(); int GetMasterVolumeLevelScalar(out float pfLevel); int k(); int l(); int m(); int n(); int SetMute([MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)] bool bMute, System.Guid pguidEventContext); int GetMute(out bool pbMute); } [Guid("D666063F-1587-4E43-81F1-B948E807363F"), InterfaceType(ComInterfaceType.InterfaceIsIUnknown)] interface IMMDevice { int Activate(ref System.Guid id, int clsCtx, int activationParams, out IAudioEndpointVolume aev); } [Guid("A95664D2-9614-4F35-A746-DE8DB63617E6"), Inte

Creating Menus in Powershell

I have created another Powershell module. This time it is about Console Menus you can use to ease the usage for members of your oranization. It is available on GitHub and published to the PowershellGallery . It is called cliMenu. Puppies This is a Controller module. It uses Write-Host to create a Menu in the console. Some of you may recall that using Write-Host is bad practice. Controller scripts and modules are the exception to this rule. In addition with WMF5 Write-Host writes to the Information stream in Powershell, so it really does not matter anymore. Design goal I have seen to many crappy menus that is a mixture of controller script and business logic. It is in essence a wild west out there, hence my ultimate goal is to create something that makes it as easy as possible to create a menu and change the way it looks. Make it easy to build Menus and change them Make it as "declarative" as possible Menus The module supports multiple Men