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Gijs_Reijn's avatar
Gijs_Reijn
Brass Contributor
May 20, 2025

Yeah, wasn't really sure to point it out as I couldn't fully grasp it out of the story you told. However, yes, I was already a little afraid you were predominantly looking for that.

MichaelC's avatar
MichaelC
Brass Contributor
May 21, 2025

Sorry to pile on the replies here, but my thought process is this:

  • Many teams want cloud-agnostic tooling
  • Azure is not the primary cloud of a lot of bleeding edge, software-dev first environments
  • The one space Azure has a really solid lock on is US Government, because the Azure US Gov team goes through great lengths to get all of the necessary certifications for the cloud stack.
  • Just by the nature of how bullet point 3 works above, it means that there's a good chance that Azure-first systems (the orchestration behind something like DSCv3) will have quite a bit of delay.

Therefore, with all those constraints, I feel like some of the teams at MS (whichever team it is, Windows probably?) needs a different strategy than "Azure first"--just like the PowerShell and .NET teams moved away from "Windows first/Windows Only" mindset.

A lightweight orchestration system included with the OS, enough to do some get/set/test of Config as Code with module and configuration distribution would be nice. Integrate portions of it (reporting/visibility) into Windows Admin Center.

This allows these features to be rolled out almost immediately across every scenario, including compliance scenarios (like ITAR, CUI environments, disconnected environments).

Meanwhile, if the Azure team wants to separately build their own system (such as Azure Machine config), they can do so. Maybe theirs is more robust, I dunno. Maybe they build in some wider automatic integrations.

I think it's a win/win all around, to be fair. It brings DSCv3 to the forefront, it encourages resource migration from PowerShell DSC to DSCv3 resources, it could integrate across a variety of environments: from disconnected ones, compliant environments, multiple clouds, and the Azure and/or Windows teams can work independently of each other.

I think what Steve and team did with DSCv3 is great, and I think helming that knowing they have a small team and little adoption takes a lot of....personal might. I also like how they listen to end users/customers (such as bicep language support).

Just need to get the rest of the Windows org to do the same.

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