Azure DSC notes

21 Sep 2016 Thoughts on approach

• Set up a long-lived Win10 Workstation w/ Atom, PowershellISE, Git
• Use powershell remoting/DSC remoting to manage nodes
• Don't use Azure Automation as it may not be available
  • At our scale, probably still overkill

Relevant pages, in order:

• desktop w/ chocolatey
• ssh and git in windows
• azure and powershell remoting
• remote dsc in Azure and CimSession

Links:

[https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/virtual-machines-command-line-tools/](Azure CLI commands in Azure Service Management mode)

https://github.com/Azure/packer-azure

[https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/virtual-machines-windows-classic-capture-image/](How to save an image for re-use in Azure classic)

Work so far:

• standup Win2012r2 in Azure
• install choco and then powershell 5
• sysprep image
• copy as Win2012r2WPSAtom
• bring up as win2012copy

Next steps:

• RDP to box
• Git clone the DSC
• Run it

Notes

choco install git -y
choco install vim -y
git clone ...
cd azure_sandbox
git checkout pdb/azure_asm
cd dsc
.\washere.ps1
Start-DSCConfiguration ./DSCConf1 -Force -Wait -Verbose
```

Then things got weird. See https://powershell.org/forums/topic/dcs-connection-error/ Some combination of the following fixed it:

```
Enable-PSRemoting
winrm quickconfig # enable broad access to WinRM
```

Then this worked:

Start-DSCConfiguration ./DSCConf1 -Force -Wait -Verbose

Why we combine -Force and -Wait - (shrug)


Then:
- Fresh copy
- Do it via Automation 

Interesting aside:

brew cask install Caskroom/cask/powershell