From Configuration Drift to DevOps Mastery: Managing Azure and Microsoft 365 with DSC

PowerShell Conference EU 2025 hosted a game-changing session led by Gael Colas (Director at SynEdgy) and Raimund Andree, who showed the audience how to bring order to the chaos of cloud configurations through Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and automation.

In their session, “Configuring Azure Entra ID and M365 with DSC”, the speakers tackled a fundamental problem: manual configuration management of Microsoft 365 and Azure tenants is prone to errors, lacks traceability, and simply doesn’t scale.

Watch their session now

The Challenge of Cloud Configuration

Too often, organizations rely on GUIs to manage critical cloud configurations. This leads to:

• Configuration drift
• Poor documentation
• No visibility on changes

Raimund and Gael proposed a better way—automated, version-controlled, and testable configuration using tools like Microsoft365DSC, Azure DevOps, Pester, and YAML.

The DSC + DevOps Pipeline Approach

Participants followed a hands-on walkthrough using the Microsoft365DSC project and the accompanying Microsoft365DscWorkshop. Key takeaways included:

• Exporting the live configuration of an Azure or M365 tenant
• Managing that configuration in source control
• Promoting changes safely across Dev > Test > Prod environments
• Using Azure DevOps Pipelines to automate validation and deployment
• Leveraging PSScriptAnalyzer, Pester, and idempotent scripts to ensure safe repeatability

This approach allows teams to build robust cloud environments that are transparent, documented, and scalable—from just two tenants to hundreds.

Community and Real-World Application

As open-source contributors, Gael and Raimund emphasized that Microsoft365DSC is community-driven and constantly evolving. They showcased:

• Group and application management via DSC
• YAML configuration modeling
• Compliance enforcement using pull requests and release pipelines

Want to go further? Learn with SynEdgy

If you’re intrigued by this approach and want to master it for your organization, SynEdgy offers dedicated training programs on Desired State Configuration (DSC) and PowerShell automation.

📍 Visit our training offers and transform your cloud operations with confidence.