Announcing the xSharePoint module for PowerShell DSC!

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I am super excited to be able to get this one out there - PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) is a great mechanism to automate configurations of Windows Server and the products that run on them, but to date there has not been a set of DSC resources that allowed the deployment and configuration of SharePoint 2013. This is where the xSharePoint resource comes in! We are aiming to fill that gap and allow for DSC based deployment and configuration of servers in a SharePoint farm.

The current build is very much so a pre-release (version 0.2) and provides a starting point for DSC in the SharePoint space. It includes the following resources:

  •     xBCSServiceApp
  •     xSPCacheAccounts
  •     xSPClearRemoteSessions
  •     xSPCreateFarm
  •     xSPDiagnosticLoggingSettings
  •     xSPDistributedCacheService
  •     xSPFeature
  •     xSPInstall
  •     xSPInstallPreReqs
  •     xSPJoinFarm
  •     xSPManagedAccount
  •     xSPManagedMetadataServiceApp
  •     xSPManagedPath
  •     xSPSearchServiceApp
  •     xSPSecureStoreServiceApp
  •     xSPServiceAppPool
  •     xSPServiceInstance
  •     xSPSite
  •     xSPStateServiceApp
  •     xSPUsageApplication
  •     xSPUserProfileServiceApp
  •     xSPUserProfileSyncService
  •     xSPWebApplication

In the current version the majority of these resources are focused purely on deployment rather than ongoing management of their configuration (like I said, it's pre-release and early days), but we will be working on extending the functionality of these resources, as well as adding new ones as we move forward.

Want to get involved in contributing to the xSharePoint module? It's hosted on GitHub over at https://github.com/PowerShell/xSharePoint, and we would love to see your pull requests for changes and new features come through to be included in the project. If you are keen to contribute then have a look at our contribution guidelines for more information. Lastly be sure to have a look at the wiki for the documentation on how to make use of these DSC resources and some guidance on how to plan to implement xSharePoint.

I'm really looking forward to seeing this module develop and mature over the coming months, it's been great to work on it to date. I want to throw a big thank you out there to the Australian SharePoint PFE community who helped pull together this first cut, in particular Andrew Lynes and Cam Adams who put a lot of work in with me to help get this project going.

Let me know what you think in the comments, I absolutely welcome the feedback!