Forum Discussion
Windows Server OSConfig and DSCv3
I actually have a very practical reason for bringing it up, though. For $DayJob I work out of Azure Government and M365 GCC High, and pretty much anything Azure in that environment lags behind the commercial environment.
Hot patch for Azure Arc servers, for example, doesn't yet exist in the Azure US Government environment. This environment can sometimes lag the commercial Microsoft cloud services by quite a bit. As an example, I'm still missing some Intune functionality and it's been 6 years since I started working in that stack.
Thankfully, it DOES look like Azure Machine Configuration does exist in USGov (I just looked), which is nice. But it looks like on Windows that's still using PowerShell v2 and not v3. It seems it's using v3 for Linux, however.
So I worry the switch from v2 to v3 in USGov could be at least 12 months out on Windows, if not longer. It'll take however long for them to roll it out as a preview, then it has to hit GA, and then there's a multi-month lag time for it to hit the Azure Government environment.
So even using Microsoft tooling I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place.
But it looks like on Windows that's still using PowerShell v2 and not v3. It seems it's using v3 for Linux, however.
FYI 'PowerShell DSC 3.0' and 'Microsoft DSC 3.0' aren't the same thing (yes, it's confusing).
PowerShell DSC 3.0 is what Machine Configuration uses for Linux, but it shares more in common with PowerShell DSC 2.0 (which is used by MC for Windows) than with Microsoft DSC 3.0
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/scripting/dsc/overview?view=powershell-7.5
That's confusing and also good to know! Thanks :)