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powershellazuredsc

Desired State Configuration Vs Azure ARM - Are They Complimentary to Each Other?

Have been well versed with ARM Templates & Parameters using Powershell. I have come to know lately that Desired State Configuration is the recommended way by Microsoft for Windows Server configurations.

As some of many of the parameters can also be configured using ARM Template, why is there a need of yet another approach DSC?

What I have researched and found out: But I would seek your expert & authoritative answer on following:

  1. Is DSC suitable for windows Internals only & to ensure that the configuration is maintained by constant polling?
  2. DSC is not be helpful for provisioning machines & Azure resources, like Azure ARM does.
Solution

  • ARM Templates deploy Azure resources (like networking, storage, sql, vms, redis, webapp, etc). And can configure those to some extent.

    Whereas Powershell DSC is only good for configuring VM's (not creating them).

    That being said, technically there was a DSC module for Azure, but generally speaking they (DSC and ARM Templates) operate on different levels, but the idea is the same.