Skip to main content

Desired State Configuration - ConfigurationData

PowershellContact

Update 12.10.2016 - More functions added to repro some while ago

This module has been laying dormant in my BitBucket repro. Looks like people are realizing that DSC is about to become a thing. Need some feedback if this is a way of handling your Configuration data in DSC. I will publish it to the PowershellGallery if people find it useful. Should probably do a code review as well since this was written over 2 years ago :-0.

Update 19.04.2014 - Module (beta) added to bitbucket here

When you start to work with DSC, you quickly realize that separating the infrastructure from the configuration is a huge benefit and somewhat of a curse. You start to read blogs and webposts explaining how you can specify the configurationdata to you configuration, however for the people that does not speak powershell (yes they are out there) and/or still don’t like it, it looks kind of “untidy”. Example:

image

Yes, Beelzebub has joined the party, pure evil. Just to explain ConfigurationData in Desired State Configuration:

It consists of two main elements:
  1. AllNodes (an array of all you nodes you want to configure)
  2. NonNodeData (an hashtable of properties that may or may not be related to any specific node)
So instead of the “rubbish” configdata variable above, we are going to do the same like this:

Import-Module DSCconfigdata

Add-DSCnode -Name Server1
Add-DSCnode -Name Server2

Add-DSCproperty -Name WinFeatures
Add-DSCproperty -Name SourceRoot
Add-DSCproperty -Name WebDirectory
Add-DSCproperty -Name RecurseValue

(Get-DSCNode -Name Server1).Role = "web"
(Get-DSCNode -Name Server1).WinFeatures = "web-server"
(Get-DSCNode -Name Server1).SourceRoot = "\\Server106\source\presentation\"
(Get-DSCNode -Name Server1).WebDirectory = "c:\inetpub\wwwroot\"
(Get-DSCNode -Name Server1).RecurseValue = $false

Add-DSCproperty -NonNodeData -Name DNSIPAddress -Value "8.8.8.8"
Add-DSCproperty -NonNodeData -Name DNSName -Value "resolve.contoso.com"
Add-DSCproperty -NonNodeData -Name SubnetMask -Value "255.255.255.0"
Add-DSCproperty -NonNodeData -Name DNSIPAddress -Value "contoso.com"



Should give you something like this:

image


image

image

The module have these methods:

image

The module also exports a variable called $configData. You may also use the function Get-DSCConfigData, the result is the same. 

One other nice feature is to allow clear text passwords in you MOF-files. Just use the Set-AllowClearTextPassword function to enable this (for all nodes or specific nodes). 

Of course if you just want to inspect the configuration for a node, use this:

image

So the module is still in development, however if you are keen on trying it, hit me up on twitter or post a comment.

Cheers

Comments

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