What is Project OSConfig?

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Project OSConfig represents our long-term vision: To improve configuration management outcomes no matter the device OS or the provisioning/management tool. Project OSConfig seeks to enhance (not compete with) existing provisioning and management experiences.

Benefits for device feature developers

  • Write-once manageability: Enable device feature developers to expose their state and configuration knobs to all management experiences through a low-code write-once-use-everywhere framework
  • Separation of concerns: Enable feature developers to focus on their feature, while offloading device management nuances like enrollment, authentication, protocols, data formats, integrity, drift protection, multiple authorities, conflict resolution, and complex scenario orchestration.
  • Re-use existing assets: In Windows cases, existing features may already have Group Policy policies defined, WMI providers, CSPs, DSC resources, etc. Existing features on Linux may already have public configuration files, etc. We seek to help feature teams make the most of those existing investments to reduce or eliminate rework.

Benefits for developers of configuration provisioning & management tools

  • Self describing features: Improve admin tool developer productivity by enabling meta-data-driven no-code and low-code tool development
  • Declarative low-chatter relationship to devices: Improve scalability and simplicity of admin tools & cloud-services by enabling a simplified declarative style of management with automatic handling of complex scenario orchestration

For SecOps professionals, device image builders, fleet operators, and other users of configuration management tools

  • Consistency: Better and more consistent experiences across personas and their preferred tool-chains
  • Velocity: Reduce lag time in management tools supporting new device features
  • Simplicity: Automatic handling of multiple authorities and conflict resolution for your devices
  • Compliance: Prevent configuration drift and protect config stack from interference

Next steps