DSC vs Other technology

Comparison of some deployment and configuration management technologies, reflecting the modern state of things as of 2025.

GPOs

  • Fancy way of setting registry entries / user & OS-policy settings (user experience, desktops)
  • Requires on-premise AD / Group Policy infrastructure
  • Good at configuring user experience, desktop policies; not designed for software installation or server provisioning
  • OU / AD-structure becomes a limitation if not planned well
  • Easy to circumvent (if user has admin rights or does not want to apply it)

SCCM

  • Will perform deployment you want on the systems you want at the time you want — OS deployment, software, patches, bare-metal, server or workstation imaging
  • Flexibility with Collections for targeting groups of machines
  • Good for bare-metal, OS roll-out, large homogeneous fleets
  • Requires substantial infrastructure and an agent on clients/servers
  • Task sequences and configurations can get complex, heavy overhead for maintenance

MDM

  • No on-premise infrastructure — it’s cloud / device-management oriented; useful for mobile OS / modern device management
  • Can apply settings and deploy apps in a mobile / cloud / managed-device context
  • Doesn’t target traditional Windows-server workloads or deep server configuration; not ideal for complex server or infrastructure management
  • Limited scope for fine-grained Windows server role configuration, registry tweaking, or cross-platform server setups

DSC (classic / PS-DSC)

  • Declarative configuration tool integrated with PowerShell — infrastructure-as-code approach to define system state declaratively, not as imperative scripts.
  • Helps avoid configuration drift: ensures all machines stay in the declared desired state; scalable across machines.
  • Works well for server roles, service configuration, registry settings, baseline configuration, compliance across Windows (and to some degree Linux) nodes.
  • Configurations (MOF-based) + Local Configuration Manager (agent / LCM) model — some management overhead; older syntax (PowerShell DSL + MOF) can be rigid.
  • Less suited for user-experience or desktop-policy management compared to GPO; better for infrastructure/server configuration

DSC v3 (modern)

  • Fully modernized version of DSC: standalone tool (not dependent on PowerShell), works cross-platform (Windows, Linux, macOS).
  • Configurations are defined in JSON or YAML (not MOF); resources can be authored in any language (PowerShell, Python, Go, C#, Bash, etc.), making the system language-agnostic.
  • Declarative + idempotent: DSC v3 ensures the system reaches and stays in the desired state, without re-applying unnecessary changes.
  • Easier integration with modern DevOps / infrastructure-as-code workflows: JSON/YAML fits CI/CD pipelines, version control, automation toolchains nicely.
  • Works for mixed / hybrid environments, and supports reusing existing PS-DSC resources via adapters — easing migration from classic DSC.
  • More flexible tooling: because it’s not PowerShell-only, DSC v3 is lightweight, simpler (no LCM, no Windows-only dependencies), easier to scale and adopt in polyglot environments.
  • Good for server / infrastructure configuration across OSes, automation of services, baseline configuration, reproducible deployments, and as part of IaC pipelines

Where Each Shines

  • GPOs remain best when your focus is user-experience / desktop / client policy / registry-based user or workstation settings. They are simple and well-suited for desktop/user management.
  • SCCM remains relevant when you need powerful deployment and software/OS management (bare-metal imaging, large server/workstation fleets, patching, complex rollouts).
  • MDM works when dealing with mobile devices, modern device management scenarios, cloud-managed workstations/mobile OS — but isn’t ideal for infrastructure or detailed server config.
  • DSC “classic” (PS-DSC) is a good fit for server configuration, baseline management, Windows-server estates — particularly useful to enforce configuration drift prevention.
  • DSC v3 is the most forward-looking: ideal for modern infrastructure-as-code, hybrid/multi-OS environments, cloud + on-premises, automation pipelines — especially when you want reproducible, declarative, cross-platform infrastructure config, leveraging flexible resource authoring and integration.

Tooling

AMDXtoDSC

Description: https://4sysops.com/archives/convert-group-policy-to-powershell-dsc-with-admxtodsc/

Download: https://github.com/gpoguy/ADMXToDSC

MSIPackage DSC Resource

Can be used to install MSI files.

Further Reading