Puppet Labs announces the availability of two new modules for Microsoft PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) and Windows Server Update Services.

Building on Puppet Labs’ extensive Windows support, customers can now manage PowerShell DSC and Windows Server Update Service — two critical components of Windows Server environments — with Puppet Enterprise, enabling wider adoption of DevOps practices by Windows teams.

Many large enterprise organizations manage heterogeneous infrastructure with separate teams and tools to manage their Linux and Windows environments, resulting in siloed operations and tool proliferation. Puppet Enterprise provides a single solution for managing multi-platform, multi-cloud environments, including networking and storage devices. It provides a common language for development, operations, networking and storage teams that eases collaboration and sharing. By defining Windows Server infrastructure as Puppet code, Windows teams can leverage DevOps practices, such as continuous delivery, to improve the quality and speed of deployments.

"Our goal is to give everyone the power to use the best tools to manage their infrastructure, whether it's Linux, Windows, or something else," said Nigel Kersten, CIO, Puppet Labs. "By adding DSC and Windows Server Update Service support we're making it easier for teams managing diverse infrastructure to embrace DevOps practices by providing a common language and workflow to automate all aspects of the system regardless of the underlying platform."

Windows PowerShell DSC is a platform for managing and deploying changes to Windows resources and currently supports over 200 resources, including Microsoft Azure Active Directory, Microsoft Internet Information Services, Microsoft Azure, and more. The Puppet Labs DSC module enables admins to manage those DSC resources with Puppet Enterprise. When used together, customers get the best of both worlds. They can manage more of their Windows Server environments by having access to the growing body of DSC resources Microsoft provides, while leveraging Puppet’s management capabilities — central reporting, node classification, RBAC, and others — to gain full visibility and control over those resources. A preview of the Puppet Labs DSC module is currently available on the Puppet Forge and will be fully supported in Q4.

“We are delighted to collaborate with Puppet Labs on their Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) platform integration to empower customers to use both Windows and Linux without complex management challenges,” said Jeffrey Snover, Technical Fellow, Microsoft. “Puppet Enterprise combines rich management tools and the PowerShell DSC platform to ensure users are able to manage our rapidly expanding ecosystem of PowerShell DSC resources across Windows or Linux.”

Windows Server Update Services is a critical service for deploying the latest Microsoft product updates. The Puppet Labs Windows Server Update Service module enables admins to configure settings on client nodes to point to the correct update servers; schedule updates and their frequency; and control update policies. This module gives admins centralized control over their Windows Server Update Service configuration settings and ensures that client nodes are consistently configured, and can provide reports showing that their machine patch settings meet compliance requirements. The fully supported Windows Server Update Service client module is currently available on the Puppet Forge.