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Ben Gelens

Automation, Development & Cloud

  1. New Terraform Azure Automation Resources

    Some time ago I contributed 3 new Terraform resources to the AzureRM Resource Provider:

    This was my first ever contribution to a Go project so I’m very proud this got merged! These 3 resources where the missing pin (for me at least) to have an end-2-end scenario enabled where pre-compiled DSC mof files and DSC resource modules could be send to an Azure Automation Account. This enables Terraform VM deployments including Guest state configuration assignment handled through Azure Automation. In this blog post I’ll demonstrate the use of these resources. I won’t go into detail on how to get started with Terraform and such as there is plenty of info available already. …

    • on Desired State Configuration Terraform Azure Automation

  2. DSC Pull Server reloaded. Part 4: Migrate EDB or MDB to SQL

    In the last post, we have seen how to use pre-create the Pull Server Database as an Azure SQL Database. It’s always nice to be able to start fresh but a lot of you already deployed Pull Servers based on WMF5+ backed by an EDB or MDB database and you want to move forward right? Now it’s time to figure out how to “migrate” your existing Pull Servers to a new SQL backed Pull Server. The key here is to again use DSCPullServerAdmin to make your life easy! If you haven’t already: 

    Install-Module DSCPullServerAdmin -Verbose -Force -Scope CurrentUser
    …

    • on Desired State Configuration Pull Server

  3. DSC Pull Server reloaded. Part 3: Pre-create the Pull Server Database

    In the last post, we have seen how to use some of the functions of DSCPullServerAdmin to make your life easier! In this post, we’ll look at another function from this module which allows you to pre-create the Pull Server Database. This is nice if you have a SQL Server where you don’t have the correct permissions to setup new databases (but are allowed to connect to a database of course) and somebody else needs to create it, or where you are trying to host the Database in a service like Azure SQL where the Pull Server itself is not capable of creating the Database due the inability to use the initial catalog in the connection string. In this post we’ll use Azure SQL as our target Database platform. …

    • on Desired State Configuration Pull Server

  4. DSC Pull Server reloaded. Part 2: Managing the Pull Server with DSCPullServerAdmin

    In the last post, we have seen how to setup a simple DSC Pull Server backed by a SQL Database. In this blog post, I’ll expand upon that Pull Server by onboarding a new node and exploring some of the options of the DSCPullServerAdmin PowerShell module to interact with the database directly. DSCPullServerAdmin is a project I started a while ago to interface with the PullServer edb, making several administrative tasks better achievable. Since Microsoft announced the addition of SQL support in Windows Server 1803 and 2019, it was clear to me that this would be the way forward for the Pull Server so I decided to reboot the project focusing mainly on SQL support. Migrating from edb to SQL is also one of the things handled by this project, more on this in a later post! …

    • on Desired State Configuration Pull Server

  5. DSC Pull Server reloaded. Part 1: SQL Support

    Windows Server 1803 (Semi-Annual Channel release) and the upcoming Windows Server 2019 introduces a big change for the DSC Pull Server in the form of SQL support. Having SQL as a (supported) backend unlocks a lot of potential for the “inbox” DSC Pull Server (making it more alive then ever). In this blog post, and the following blog posts in this series, I’m exploring some of the options that came to my mind and hopefully will get you inspired as well! …

    • on Desired State Configuration Pull Server