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CoolHand writes:

The Register reports that Microsoft has released a new Powershell DSC tool to manage configuration of Linux boxes from the powershell interface. This would be similar to Puppet and friends that are used for this task today.

In yet another sign that Microsoft is a very different animal these days, the company has released PowerShell DSC (desired state configuration) for Linux.

PowerShell DSC is a server configuration tool that has hitherto driven Windows Server boxen. But Microsoft's now decided it has a “commitment to common management of heterogeneous assets in your datacenter or the public cloud”, so has added Linux-wrangling features to the tool.

The new code can cope with CentOS, Debian GNU/Linux, Oracle Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, and Ubuntu Server.

The github site for the project says:

Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) provides a configuration platform built into Windows that is based on open standards. DSC is flexible enough to function reliably and consistently in each stage of the deployment lifecycle (development, test, pre-production, production), as well as during scale-out, which is required in the cloud world.

It looks like this Powershell DSC is actually built with Python and will run on Linux, not just Windows systems with Powershell.

There have been a few signs recently that Microsoft may be becoming a bit more open and less of the MS we knew in the Gates/Ballmer eras. Is this another sign that MS is actually pursuing that trend? Or is it a bid to gain more control over the Linux-sphere? Would any Soylentils think about using this for configuration management over Puppet, Chef, cfengine, or Ansible?