Desired State Configuration (DSC) has been around for years, yet many PowerShell users either avoided it or abandoned it after early frustrations. With DSC v3, Microsoft has clearly rebooted the concept — but what does that actually mean in practice?

In this session, I’ll take a deliberately honest and pragmatic approach: I didn’t know DSC v3 when I started preparing this talk. Instead of presenting a polished “perfect architecture,” I will walk you through my real findings while discovering DSC v3 from scratch.

We’ll start by clarifying what DSC v3 really is — and what it is not. We’ll look at how it differs from classic DSC (v1/v2), why Microsoft moved away from a PowerShell-only model, and how DSC v3 fits into today’s configuration management landscape.

From there, we’ll explore:

How DSC v3 works conceptually (resources, configuration, execution model)

What has improved — and what is still missing

Where DSC v3 makes sense today, and where it clearly does not

How approachable DSC v3 is for PowerShell users who never adopted DSC before

Rather than focusing on complex enterprise scenarios, this session emphasizes clarity and realism. The demos are intentionally simple, highlighting the learning curve, the tooling, and the developer experience as it exists today.

You’ll leave this session with:

A clear mental model of DSC v3

An honest understanding of its strengths and limitations

Enough context to decide whether DSC v3 deserves a place in your toolbox — or not

This talk is aimed at PowerShell users, automation engineers, and administrators who want facts, not hype, and who prefer learning from real experimentation instead of marketing slides.

At the end of this talk, you will answers to the following questions: What Is DSCv3? What problem does it help solve ? Is it easy to learn ? How do I start ?