Applies To: Windows PowerShell 5.0

DSC on Nano Server is an optional package in theNanoServer\Packages folder of the WindowsServer 2016 media. The package can be installed when you create a VHD for a Nano Server byspecifyingMicrosoft-NanoServer-DSC-Package as the value of thePackages parameter of theNew-NanoServerImage function. For example, if you are creating a VHD for a virtual machine, thecommand would look like the following:

New-NanoServerImage -Edition Standard -DeploymentType Guest -MediaPath f:\ -BasePath .\Base -TargetPath .\Nano1\Nano.vhd -ComputerName Nano1 -Packages Microsoft-NanoServer-DSC-Package

For information about installing and using Nano Server, as well as how to manage Nano Server withPowerShell Remoting, seeGetting Started with Nano Server.

DSC features available on Nano Server

Because Nano Server supports only a limited set of APIs compared to a full version of WindowsServer, DSC on Nano Server does not have full functional parity with DSC running on full SKUs forthe time being. DSC on Nano Server is in active development and is not yet feature complete.

The following DSC features are currently available on Nano Server:

Both push and pull modes

• All DSC cmdlets that exist on a full version of Windows Server, including the following:

• Get-DscLocalConfigurationManager

• Set-DscLocalConfigurationManager

• Enable-DscDebug

• Disable-DscDebug

• Start-DscConfiguration

• Stop-DscConfiguration

• Get-DscConfiguration

• Test-DscConfiguration

• Publish-DscConfiguration

• Update-DscConfiguration

• Restore-DscConfiguration

• Remove-DscConfigurationDocument

• Get-DscConfigurationStatus

• Invoke-DscResource

• Find-DscResource

• Get-DscResource

• New-DscChecksum

• Compiling configurations (seeDSC configurations)

  Issue: Password encryption (seeSecuring the MOF File) duringconfiguration compilation doesn't work.

• Compiling metaconfigurations (seeConfiguring the Local Configuration Manager)

• Running a resource under user context (seeRunning DSC with user credentials (RunAs))

• Class-based resources (seeWriting a custom DSC resource with PowerShell classes)

• Debugging of DSC resources (seeDebugging DSC resources)

  Issue: Doesn't work if a resource is using PsDscRunAsCredential (seeRunning DSC with user credentials)

• Specifying cross-node dependencies

• Resource versioning

• Pull client (configurations & resources) (seeSetting up a pull client using configuration names)

• Partial configurations (pull & push)

• Reporting to pull server

• MOF encryption

• Event logging

• Azure Automation DSC reporting

• Resources that are fully functional

  • Archive
  • Environment
  • File
  • Log
  • ProcessSet
  • Registry
  • Script
  • WindowsPackageCab
  • WindowsProcess
  • WaitForAll (seeSpecifying cross-node dependencies)
  • WaitForAny (seeSpecifying cross-node dependencies)
  • WaitForSome (seeSpecifying cross-node dependencies)

• Resources that are partially functional

  • Group

  • GroupSet

    Issue: Above resources fail if specific instance is called twice (running the sameconfiguration twice)

  • Service

  • ServiceSet

    Issue: Only works for starting/stopping (status) service. Fails, if one tries to changeother service attributes like startuptype, credentials, description etc.. The error thrown issimilar to:

    Cannot find type [management.managementobject]: verify that the assembly containing this type is loaded.

• Resources that are not functional

  • User

DSC features not available on Nano Server

The following DSC features are not currently available on Nano Server:

• Decrypting MOF document with encrypted password(s)
• Pull Server--you cannot currently set up a pull server on Nano Server
• Anything that is not in the list of feature works

Using custom DSC resources on Nano Server

Due to a limited sets of Windows APIs and CLR libraries available on Nano Server, DSC resources that work on the full CLR version of Windows do not necessarily work on Nano Server.Complete end-to-end testing before deploying any DSC custom resources to a production environment.

See Also

• Getting Started with Nano Server