After a long development period, the next version of Microsoft's Desired State Configuration appears to be on the cusp of an official release date.
Even the most dedicated DSC fan probably thought it was an abandoned technology. After several years of little to no development, many admins assumed Microsoft had dropped DSC. After all, there are plenty of other tools to manage configuration and state, such as Ansible, Chef and Puppet. However, DSC is poised to make a significant comeback with its first major release since 2016. While still in preview, the new version, called DSC v3, offers several significant changes to adapt to the needs of today's administrators. This article looks at what problems DSC tries to solve, the changes from DSC v2 to DSC v3, and the benefits you'll get from using DSC v3 in a Windows environment.