Practical Desired State Configuration (DSC)
Desired State Configuration is the future of administering Windows servers. This course will teach you how to get started using DSC by providing you with practical real world examples of DSC in action.
What you'll learn
The way you are expected to manage and administer Windows servers is changing. In this course, Practical Desired State Configuration (DSC), you'll learn how to use Desired State Configuration by applying it to several real-world scenarios. First, you'll learn how to expand DSC beyond its built-in resources by learning about custom DSC resources. Next, you'll learn how to secure DSC. Then, you'll learn how to build and administer Active Directory with DSC. Lastly, you'll learn how to set up and configure Windows Event forwarding with DSC. When you've finished this course, you'll have the skills and knowledge required to securely bring DSC into your environments.
Table of contents
- Introduction 1m
- Mof File Locations 2m
- Demo Outline 1m
- Clear Text and Encrypted Mof Files 3m
- Active Directory Certificate Services (ADCS) DSC Configuration 3m
- Generating and Exporting Self-signed Certificates 2m
- Configuring the LCM with Self-signed Certificates 4m
- Deploy Active Directory Certificate Services DSC Configuration 2m
- Issuing Active Directory Certificate Services Templates 4m
- Using Group Policy for Certificate Auto-enrollment 3m
- Exporting Certificates 4m
- Configuring the LCM with Certificate Thumbprints 4m
- Deploying Encrypted DSC Configurations Push Mode 2m
- Deploying Encrypted DSC Configurations Pull Mode 2m
- Introduction 3m
- Demo Overview 1m
- Issuing the Pull Server Web Certificate 4m
- Preparing the Pull Server 2m
- Writing and Deploying the HTTPS Pull Server DSC Configuration 6m
- Testing the Pull Server 1m
- Configuring Client Local Configuration Managers 5m
- Generating the Client DSC Configurations 6m
- Deploying Secure DSC Configurations for an HTTPS Pull Server 4m
- Summary 1m
- Introduction 1m
- xActiveDirectory DSC Resources 2m
- Demo Overview 1m
- Building an Active Directory Domain with PowerShell 2m
- Building an Active Directory Domain with DSC 7m
- Creating Active Directory Users with DSC 4m
- Creating Active Directory Groups with DSC 3m
- Creating Active Directory Organizational Units with DSC 3m
- Pre-staging Active Directory Computers with DSC 3m
- Building a Highly Available Domain Prep Work 1m
- Promoting Domain Controllers and Building an HA Domain 7m
- Demoting Domain Controllers 2m
- Summary 1m
- Introduction 2m
- Demo Overview 1m
- Configure Log Access and Enabling Auditing 5m
- Write and Deploy Windows Event Forwarding Collector Configuration 7m
- Validate Windows Event Forwarding 5m
- Promote New Domain Controller with DSC 2m
- Making the Collector DSC Configuration Dynamic 5m
- Module Summary 2m
- Course Summary 2m
About the author
Josh Duffney is a Senior Cloud Advocate at Microsoft, where he works on the cloud-native team. He is a former Microsoft MVP and ex-SRE at Stack Overflow. Josh has a strong focus on Golang, building DevOps tools, and securing software. As a Pluralsight author, Josh shares his expertise in these areas, helping others develop their skills and achieve their goals.