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Microsoft Releases PowerShell DSC For Linux
jones_supa writes: Microsoft is announcing that PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) for Linux is available for download in form of RPM and DEB packages. DSC is a new management platform that provides a set of PowerShell extensions that you can use to declaratively specify how you want your software environment to be configured. You can now use the DSC platform to manage the configuration of both Windows and Linux workloads with the PowerShell interface. Microsoft says that bringing DSC to Linux is another step in the company's "broader commitment to common management of heterogeneous assets in your datacenter or the public cloud." Adds reader benjymouse: DSC is in the same space as Chef and Puppet (and others); but unlike those, Microsofts attempts to build a platform/infrastructure based on industry standards like OMI to allow DSC to configure and control both Windows, Linux and other OSes as well as network equipment like switches, etc.
It is a lot easier to embrace an "open standard" when you developed it yourself, then donated it to a consortium.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...
"- Comes with a mini IDE called PowerShell ISE for developing scripts"
No. A shell that has an IDE to aid formulating godforsaken scripts that mere mortals can't even remember. Just no.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Why the hell did they put the verb first in command names? They're all Get-This or Set-That or Export-Those or Write-These. This makes an alphabetic list of commands useless, because it groups by verb instead of by noun. It's just one long list of Get- commands, for example, that then need to be searched to find the relevant noun. They should have put the noun first.
Have you ever seen init scripts? Theyre way more painful to deal with than anything powershell ever is.
The reason they have an IDE for it is because you can use it to do incredibly complex things, like design GUIs that tie in administration elements from Active Directory, SANs, switch configuration, virtual infrastructure configuration and deployment, and computer administration-- all in one language with a common syntax.
Doing something like that would be a nightmare in bash. It sounds like you havent used powershell, which is a pretty good reason not to comment on it.
Powershell is a shell written by programmers who have no understanding of what you want when administering a box. I remember when it surprised me the first time by being clever and inheriting the size of the console and automatically inserting a CR/LF into the lines of the files I was trying to process.... morons. Just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should, yes OO is a powerful construct but it just gets in the way of a simple scripting tool. Powershell is littered with little gems like this that make it absolutely useless. If you find yourself doing too much with a shell script rewrite it in a more powerful programming language like python, it should take you all of 30 minutes.
Im of the opinion that it takes all of about 8 hours to learn to do the majority of things you would want to do in powershell (partly because thats about how long it took me). You just have to take some time to sit down and learn it, and then make an effort to use it instead of GUI administration tools. It is far, far superior to old windows command prompt and vbs,
I think the same can be said about any *nix shell. Having used powershell a few times, it really just feels like a kludged attempt to bring CMD.exe to something closer to bash.... 20 years later. Now the question becomes just because you can use it, does it mean you should? Last I checked, Windows still has a lot of protections from even the simplest modifications. I much prefer being able to see /etc/fstab than working with some nebulous class with functions that barely make sense.
What the hell kind of sadist is going to manage their machines from a Linux machine running PowerShell?
"Unsupported configuration" is the first hurdle that I'd foresee, followed by just being plain, unnecessarily painful.
Only for windows admins that are forced to manage linux servers,. I can do a lot more with old linux tools than powershell have ever had the capability of.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I think the same can be said about any *nix shell
Clearly you've not done much UNIX shell scripting, if you've not been bitten by the issues with having to escape strings multiple times.
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But if I am going to learn something new, what advantages this powershell has that python does not? Cygwin + bash is cross platform enough for me to switch between ssh windows in linux boxes and my windows desktop.
Desired State Configuration (DSC) that FTFA was about, is definitely one such thing that PowerShell has that python has not. DSC is a *declarative* description of the configuration you want for a target system. You should think more in line of Chef or Puppet than Python. PowerShell DSC for Linux actually *uses* Python.
The idea is that you use PowerShell to define a data structure (much like a Ruby hash) that describes the configuration of the node. DSC will itself resolve dependencies. If you require a feature DSC will ensure that the feature is installed - much like a package manager - but it actually interacts with the package manager. What package managers do not do is to configure the products once they are installed. This could be connection strings, IP addresses, user accounts.
PowerShell DSC for Linux has "resources" for file system, user accounts, text file content, package managers (Yum, Apt, Zypper), scripts, daemons, ssh keys and more. You use those resources to describe how you want a system to look - like a Chef recipe. The resource description can be parameterized (it is just a PowerShell function and can take parameters like PS functions) so that the same resource description can be used for multiple targets with slightly different values.
Once applied, DSC will ensure that the target is set up so that it matches the target. From there on it can also report on drift (e.g. more users created, files deleted/changed etc) and can warn about it and automatically bring the node back to the desired state (undoing the drift).
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
In the Linux world, Powershell is very limited. You may think it's powerful, but it's really very weak. If you know linux well enough, you have complete control over everything including the kernel.
So you claim, but I have yet to hear of anything that can't be done in Powershell. Undoubtedly there will be something, but I think that most of the time when people make this claim it is because they just assume that it is the case. But when asked to back up the statement...
Well, we can see what has happened. Just further vague claims.
Nah. In PowerShell:
iwr "http://server/path/to/file.zip" -outf "${env:TEMP}/file.zip"
You can try to make it look more verbose. But expect to be called out on it.
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
"Those who don't understand UNIX are condemned to reinvent it, poorly."
I gave up with the idea of an useful sig...