PowerShell DSC Getting Started Guide - Part 4, Partial Configurations

Part 1 - Pushing a configuration and Credentials
Part 2 - Pull Server Setup
Part 3 - Custom Scripts
Part 4 - Partial Configurations.

Partial Configurations

Sometimes, having multiple configurations for a single server could be beneficial. For example, all servers built may follow a single base configuration, with another configuration to install and setup an application.

Another example could be the 2 or more teams are responsible for the ultimate setup of a server with each team managing some portion of the configuration. Both teams can run a pull server with their own configurations.

To handle this, DSC now supports partial configurations. Partial configurations can be set up using push, pull or some combination of both.

In this example, the LCM on the client is configured to pull 2 configurations from the pull server using the ConfigurationID method. ConfigurationID should not be an easily guessable number therefore New-Guid is a good method to generate this.


The following is a basic test configuration for the machine using the 2 partial configuration names set up in the LCM configuration. It is using the same $AllNodes configuration data as the above LCM configuration.

 


In the above configuration, using the same $AllNodes configuration data, the mof files are published to the correct location on the pull server.

It is possible to configure this using the Configuration Names method also. Further reading on this topic can be found on MSDN here.