Help Us Build Useful Example Configurations for DSC v3

[theJasonHelmick]

Hey Folks!

We’re looking to build a collection of simple and functional example configurations for DSC v3 that can be included in the DSC project to help others get started quickly.

These examples should be:
• Practical: Represent real-world scenarios that are useful to others.
• Simple: Easy to read, understand, and modify.
• Functional: Ideally executable with resources included in DSC by default or with PSDesiredStateConfiguration.

We’d love your help sharing configuration scenarios that meet these goals!

If possible, please base your examples on resources that are already available in the DSC v3 bundle or in PowerShell PSDesiredStateConfiguration. However, if your scenario needs a community-contributed resource, that’s fine too—just let us know.

Some example themes might include:
• Basic OS configuration (hostname, timezone, etc.)
• File/folder presence
• Registry settings (Windows)
• Package installation
• Ensuring a local user or group exists
• Service or process checks

Feel free to post:
• The scenario/goal
• A short description of why it’s useful
• A sample config (YAML or BICEP)

We’ll collect and refine these examples and include a curated set in the repo to help new users explore what’s possible with DSC v3.

[Gijsreyn]

Hey @theJasonHelmick, just wondering, what about the reference documentation? Do you think it should also be included here?

[theJasonHelmick]

Hi @Gijsreyn! Do you mean examples for the reference documentation? That I would submit to Mikey - through an issue labeled for docs.

[Gijsreyn]

@theJasonHelmick, what I was mainly referring to is the fact that people currently have to go into the repository and manually locate the examples. If these examples were added to the reference documentation, they would be published on Microsoft Learn. That said, I also recognize that it might clutter the Learn space. I just wanted to hear your thoughts on this.

[theJasonHelmick]

Yup -- :). I love trying to find better discovery methods for content like this -- but the docs platform has pretty specific guidelines about how examples can be used with the content. I'm sure we will cherry-pick some of these examples to use in docs, but a complete example list in docs is doubtful. Let's keep this conversation open and I will see how far we can go. Also, I'm open to other ideas on how we can make these more discoverable.

[michaeltlombardi]

We can possibly add entries to the TOC to link off to the samples - we already do that for the resource development tutorials that we host separately.