title: Azure Automation DSC Overview | Microsoft Docs description: An Overview of Azure Automation Desired State Configuration (DSC), its terms, and known issues services: automation documentationcenter: dev-center-name author: eslesar manager: carmonm keywords: powershell dsc, desired state configuration, powershell dsc azure
ms.assetid: fd40cb68-c1a6-48c3-bba2-710b607d1555 ms.service: automation ms.devlang: NA ms.topic: article ms.tgt_pltfrm: powershell ms.workload: TBD ms.date: 06/15/2017 ms.author: eslesar
Azure Automation DSC is an Azure service that allows you to write, manage, and compile PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) configurations, import DSC Resources, and assign configurations to target nodes, all in the cloud.
Azure Automation DSC provides several advantages over using DSC outside of Azure.
Azure Automation provides a DSC pull server so that target nodes automatically receive configurations, conform to the desired state, and report back on their compliance. The built-in pull server in Azure Automation eliminates the need to set up and maintain your own pull server. Azure Automation can target virtual or physical Windows or Linux machines, in the cloud or on-premises.
Azure Automation DSC brings the same management layer to PowerShell Desired State Configuration as Azure Automation offers for PowerShell scripting.
From the Azure portal, or from PowerShell, you can manage all your DSC configurations, resources, and target nodes.
Nodes that are managed with Azure Automation DSC send detailed reporting status data to the built-in pull server. You can configure Azure Automation DSC to send this data to your Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS) Log Analytics workspace. To learn how to send DSC status data to your Log Analytics workspace, see Forward Azure Automation DSC reporting data to OMS Log Analytics.
Prefer watching to reading? Have a look at the following video from May 2015, when Azure Automation DSC was first announced.
Note
While the concepts and life cycle discussed in this video are correct, Azure Automation DSC has progressed a lot since this video was recorded. It is now generally available, has a much more extensive UI in the Azure portal, and supports many additional capabilities.
[!VIDEO https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Ignite/2015/BRK3467/player]
- To learn how to onboard nodes to be managed with Azure Automation DSC, see Onboarding machines for management by Azure Automation DSC
- To get started using Azure Automation DSC, see Getting started with Azure Automation DSC
- To learn about compiling DSC configurations so that you can assign them to target nodes, see Compiling configurations in Azure Automation DSC
- For PowerShell cmdlet reference for Azure Automation DSC, see Azure Automation DSC cmdlets
- For pricing information, see Azure Automation DSC pricing
- To see an example of using Azure Automation DSC in a continuous deployment pipeline, see Continuous Deployment to IaaS VMs Using Azure Automation DSC and Chocolatey