1. Your CMDB and PowerShell DSC: DevOps Techniques
Nathan Lasnoski
@nlasnoski
Concurrency
MMS Minnesota 2014

2. Configuration Management v1
How it works
Manual tracking of configuration data
Gathered from tools or physical inventory
Lives in spreadsheet or light CMDB
What it does
Facilitates asset and inventory functions
MMS Minnesota 2014

3. Configuration Management v2
How it works
Automated tracking of configuration data
Gathered exclusively from tools
Lives in a CMDB
What it does
Automation against CMDB data
Facilitates asset and inventory functions
Informs change management
MMS Minnesota 2014

4. Configuration Management v3
How it works
Declarative configuration to targets
Automated tracking of configuration data
Deployed and gathered from tools
Defined in scripts and managed in source control / CMDB
What it does
Normalized configuration is declaratively deployed or pulled by targets
Automation against CMDB data for outliers or processes
Facilitates asset and inventory functions
Informs change management
MMS Minnesota 2014

5. How to build Configuration Management v3
Source Control (TFS, GIT, etc.)
Source Staging (Orchestrator)
Configuration Management Database (SCSM)
Configuration Repository (Orchestrator + SCSM)
Configuration Language (PowerShell)
Configuration Deployment Mechanism (PowerShell DSC)
MMS Minnesota 2014

6. Declarative Configuration in PowerShell DSC
Microsoft’s platform for configuration management
Declarative configuration is applied on push or pull
Multi-vendor (Microsoft, Linux, Network…)
Facilitates re-application of configuration
MMS Minnesota 2014

7. Components of PowerShell DSC
Authoring
Written in PowerShell
Stored in a source repository
Staging
Declarative configuration creates MOF files
Configuration is built for all nodes requiring MOF
Apply
Configuration is “pulled” or “pushed” to targets of MOFs
Each configuration is declarative and will overwrite previous settings
MMS Minnesota 2014

8. Traditional Scripts (Imperative) Configuration (Declarative)
DSC Configuration
Traditional Scripts (Imperative)
Configuration (Declarative)

9. Why integrate with the CMDB?
Configuration Transparency
Teams supporting servers need to know when configurations are changed
Facilitate understanding of which servers are running what configuration
Change should be managed to ensure quality of releases
Automation
When deploying a new server, a configuration must be selected
Service management is the perfect place to select that configuration
Ownership
Understanding of allocation of resources to services
Identification of configuration owners
MMS Minnesota 2014

10. How does the integration work?
Configuration Class
Stores the standard configurations for the organization
Ex: “Concurrency Web Server, Concurrency DB Server”
GUID
Configuration tracked as a related item to the server
Tracked on a per-server basis
SMA
Script Repository for Configurations
Contains one or more recent versions of the script from source control
Request Offering
Used to request a new server or deploy a configuration to an existing server
Can be combined with other automation activities within SMA
MMS Minnesota 2014

11. Let’s do this! …on to the demo!
Walkthrough of classes and framework
Review of applied configuration and DSC
… deploying it yourself
MMS Minnesota 2014

12. Next Steps and Questions…
Check out our online walkthrough and queries…
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configuration-items-using-sma
@nlasnoski
MMS Minnesota 2014