Book: Announcing Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration Revealed

If you have followed my posts here and/or heard me speaking in the last 6 to 8 months, I have been mostly focusing on Desired State Configuration. At the same time, I was busy writing a book for Apress on DSC. I am very happy to announce that this book is available for pre-order now. As I write this post, the content of the book is final and ready if you are a part of the Alpha program.

This will be my first published book and I am excited. This book will be available through Amazon and various other sales channels and will be available in all book formats. I must thank the PowerShell team members (Abhik, Nana, Hemant, Travis, and everyone on the team) and the community. Especially, I have learned a lot about DSC from my friend and fellow MVP Steven Murawski.

This book provides an overview of Windows PowerShell for beginners. I did this to help people who want to use DSC but don’t know much about PowerShell. Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration Revealed will take you through this new technology from start to finish and demonstrates the DSC interfaces through Windows PowerShell. This starts with an overview of the configuration management features in Windows, followed by a discussion of the architecture of DSC and its components. You’ll then explore DSC’s built-in features and resources, followed by some of the different methods provided for delivering configuration information within your ecosystem, and learn about configuration monitoring and reporting. In the latter part of the book, you’ll find out how to get more power out of DSC by writing your own custom DSC resources, including a range of useful examples, and the book concludes with vital information on deploying and troubleshooting DSC in a production environment, along with some expert tips and tricks you might find useful along the way.

Here is what the ~320 pages of DSC goodness contains!

Table of Contents

Part I: Introduction to Windows PowerShell

Chapter 1: Beginning Windows PowerShell

Chapter 2: Introducing Windows Remote Management CIM

Part II: Desired State Configuration

Chapter 3: Introducing Desired State Configuration

Chapter 4: Getting Started with DSC

Chapter 5: Using Built-in DSC Resources

Chapter 6: Building Advanced DSC Configurations

Part III: Advanced DSC Concepts and Tips

Chapter 7: DSC Configuration Delivery Modes

Chapter 8: Monitoring, Correcting, and Reporting Configuration

Chapter 9: Building Custom DSC Resources

Chapter 10: Troubleshooting Common DSC Issues

Chapter 11: DSC – From the Field

Appendix A: DSC Community Resources

Appendix B: WMF 5.0 and DSC for Linux

I hope you will like this work and feel free to reach out to me if you have any feedback or suggestions to make this better. WMF 5.0 brings several changes to DSC and I think it is time for me to get back to writing! 🙂