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PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) Overview

  • Article

DSC is a management platform in PowerShell that enables you to manage your IT and development infrastructure with configuration as code.

There are three versions of DSC available:

  • DSC 1.1 is the legacy version of DSC that originally shipped in Windows PowerShell 5.1.

  • DSC 2.0 is the version of DSC that shipped in PowerShell 7.

    With the release of PowerShell 7.2, the PSDesiredStateConfiguration module is no longer included in the PowerShell package. Separating DSC into its own module allows us to invest and develop DSC independent of PowerShell and reduces the size of the PowerShell package. Users of DSC will enjoy the benefit of upgrading DSC without the need to upgrade PowerShell, accelerating the time to deployment of new DSC features. Users that want to continue using DSC v2 can download PSDesiredStateConfiguration 2.0.5 from the PowerShell Gallery.

  • DSC 3.0 is the new version of DSC. This version is a preview release that is still being developed. Users working with non-Windows environments can expect cross-platform features in DSC 3.0. DSC 3.0 is the version that is supported by the machine configuration feature of Azure Automanage.

The documentation for DSC has been moved to a new location so that we can manage the DSC version-specific information separately from the versions of PowerShell.

See the new documentation in Desired State Configuration 2.0.