>Traditional Windows folks don't really use configuration management or even have any clue about it.
That's a tad unfair, I could say just as easily say the same thing about some of the Linux admins I've worked (and interviewed) with but that's not taking the discussion down a constructive road.
CM/DSC methodology is about awareness of the technologies available. There are a lot of admins out there, regardless of OS expertise, who've never heard of it full stop. I learned about it whilst working as a developer in the banking sector 12 years ago but using eye-wateringly expensive tooling from the likes of IBM and CA.
We have a 65/35 Windows/Linux environment, I have for years wanted to "CM-ize" our environments but we have two different silos of scripts and tomfoolery that get stuff done, we have a lot of friction points because of this. But one of the problems with CM tooling such as Chef, Puppet, Ansible and Salt has been the lack of sane support for Windows. Puppet seems to be getting better at it compared to the other three contenders. For example handling reboots sensibly [0] (and you know how Windows loves its reboots, and in the right order after some MSI or MSU has executed).
There is also a somewhat blinkered world view with regards to Windows i.e. "yuk, windows, not touching that", and at the risk of offending some, it's snobbery and cargo-cultism. A lot of the young folks around here have probably never tried modern Windows server management, it ain't that bad these days. If you can be bothered to learn bash and all this clever stuff on Unix, you can get a handle on learning Windows config management with Powershell which is very bloody good now.
The result is that we have silos of C/VBscript and Powershell code that go and built Windows environments in their own special Windows way because previously tools such as Chef, Ansible et al and their respective development teams don't (rightly but mostly wrongly) don't see any value in Windows support.
I speak as a platform agnostic devops person who has to live in both worlds and has supported Windows and Linux/Unix for longer than most of you have been alive :)
That's a tad unfair, I could say just as easily say the same thing about some of the Linux admins I've worked (and interviewed) with but that's not taking the discussion down a constructive road.
CM/DSC methodology is about awareness of the technologies available. There are a lot of admins out there, regardless of OS expertise, who've never heard of it full stop. I learned about it whilst working as a developer in the banking sector 12 years ago but using eye-wateringly expensive tooling from the likes of IBM and CA.
We have a 65/35 Windows/Linux environment, I have for years wanted to "CM-ize" our environments but we have two different silos of scripts and tomfoolery that get stuff done, we have a lot of friction points because of this. But one of the problems with CM tooling such as Chef, Puppet, Ansible and Salt has been the lack of sane support for Windows. Puppet seems to be getting better at it compared to the other three contenders. For example handling reboots sensibly [0] (and you know how Windows loves its reboots, and in the right order after some MSI or MSU has executed).
There is also a somewhat blinkered world view with regards to Windows i.e. "yuk, windows, not touching that", and at the risk of offending some, it's snobbery and cargo-cultism. A lot of the young folks around here have probably never tried modern Windows server management, it ain't that bad these days. If you can be bothered to learn bash and all this clever stuff on Unix, you can get a handle on learning Windows config management with Powershell which is very bloody good now.
The result is that we have silos of C/VBscript and Powershell code that go and built Windows environments in their own special Windows way because previously tools such as Chef, Ansible et al and their respective development teams don't (rightly but mostly wrongly) don't see any value in Windows support.
I speak as a platform agnostic devops person who has to live in both worlds and has supported Windows and Linux/Unix for longer than most of you have been alive :)
[0]: https://forge.puppetlabs.com/puppetlabs/reboot