Prior to deploying Microsoft Provisioning System (MPS) in your environment, you need to have completed the following:

• Planning tasks for each of your hosted services.
  
• Deployment of applicable hosted services in your environment, including Active Directory directory service.
  

See Centralized Management to resolve hosted Active Directory services planning issues such as:

• The network configuration you will need.
  
• Domain controller hardware, software, and operating system requirements.
  
• Domain names and addressing schemes.
  
• Public key infrastructure considerations.
  
• How to secure the hosting platform.
  
• Storage, migration, replication, and other design considerations.
  

For more information about networking, see Centralized Management Base Environment.

See Windows SharePoint Services Hosting to resolve any planning issues for this service, such as:

• Defining the Windows SharePoint Services servers configuration.
  
• Server hardware, software, and operating system requirements for hosted Windows SharePoint Services.
  
• Front-end Web server software configuration.
  
• Back-end Microsoft SQL Server database configuration for hosted Windows SharePoint Services.
  
• Hosted Windows SharePoint Services client software requirements.
  

Note:
You will also need to verify completion of planning tasks for Active Directory, per Centralized Management. Active Directory installation and configuration must be in place prior to deploying Windows SharePoint Services.

See Domain Name System to resolve the following DNS planning issues:

• Assessing your current environment.
  
• Designing a DNS namespace. See Microsoft Provisioning System SDK for details.
  
• Designing a DNS server infrastructure.
  
• Designing DNS zones.
  
• Configuring and managing DNS clients.
  
• Securing the DNS infrastructure.
  
• Integrating DNS with other Windows Server 2003 services.
  

See Service Providers Resources: DNS Technical Articles for articles on topics such as:

• Primary and secondary DNS server configuration for service providers.
  
• Troubleshooting DNS.
  
• Managing DNS Server configuration and security.
  
• DNS requirements for deploying Active Directory.
  

This section contains pointers to advanced MPS topics, which includes enhanced fault tolerance and load balancing, security enhancements, and MPS extensibility topics.

• See Learn More About Service Provisioning to increase your understanding of MPS.
  
• See Advanced Service Provisioning Topics to understand the concepts of fault tolerance and load balancing, and for detailed descriptions of the MPS Deployment Tool.
  

• See Fault Tolerant Service Provisioning Environment to learn how to implement a fault tolerant configuration that includes load balancing for Extensible Markup Language (XML) requests and provisioning engine traffic.
  
• See Microsoft Provisioning System Security to learn how to implement advanced MPS security features.
  

• See Microsoft Provisioning System Component Overview for a general overview of MPS capabilities and deployment scenarios.
  
• See Microsoft Provisioning System Component Overview and Choose MPS Deployment Options to review MPS component functions and architecture.
  
• See Evaluate Provisioning Implementations to learn how to construct custom namespaces that implement unique provisioning actions in your system.
  

• See Microsoft Provisioning System Component Overview to review MPS component functions and architecture.
  
• See Evaluate When to Create a New Provider to learn how to create new MPS providers that extend the functionality of your system.
  

• See Microsoft Provisioning System Component Overview to review MPS component functions and architecture.
  
• See Microsoft Provisioning System Security to understand the how to apply the security mechanisms that control MPS procedure execution.