A provider namespace directly calls the functionality of a single underlying provider. In Microsoft Provisioning System, this provider is a Component Object Model (COM) object that provides the functional interface to the external components. This enables the provisioning of Web hosting and other Web-based services. In addition to supporting custom providers and namespaces, Microsoft Provisioning System includes both the core provider namespaces, which are installed by default with Microsoft Provisioning Framework (MPF), and the additional provider namespaces, which are available from the Microsoft Provisioning System installation CD.

The basic provisioning support provided by Microsoft Provisioning System is implemented by providers and their namespaces. Several providers and provider namespaces are installed by default as part of the Microsoft Provisioning Framework (MPF) installation.

Some provider namespaces, including the two resource management provider namespaces, the Custom Audit Provider namespace, and the Error Provider namespaces, provide functionality that is essential to the implementation of MPF. These provider namespaces are read-only namespaces.

Other provider namespaces, such as the Active Directory Provider namespace, are available to meet specific provisioning requirements. These additional provider namespaces can be modified to customize the functionality that is supplied by any individual namespace.

See Standard Providers and Namespaces for the available Providers and Namespaces installed with the Microsoft Provisioning Framework.

In addition to the basic provider namespaces installed with Microsoft Provisioning Framework (MPF), Microsoft Provisioning System includes additional provider namespaces. These additional provider namespaces support the business logic that implements the functionality of provider namespaces and the MPF Web Services which are used by the MPS Sample Control Panel. Each of these additional provider namespaces is installed and registered with MPF automatically when the individual provider is installed. To be able to use the full functionality of one of the Microsoft Solutions for Hosters, you must install and use all of these additional providers and namespaces.

See Solutions Providers and Namespaces for the available Providers and Namespaces installed with the Microsoft Provisioning Framework.

The namespaces that are included in the \Program Files\Microsoft Hosting\Provisioning folder after the provisioning system is deployed are non-provider namespaces. These namespaces provide the business logic for implementing the reference architecture for Active Directory, Microsoft Exchange 2003, Internet Information Services (IIS), and Resource Manager. If you are not using Delegated Administration Console, you can still use the non-provider namespaces available in Microsoft Provisioning System to implement the business logic that is required to support Active Directory, Exchange, IIS, and Resource Manager. You can use your own custom user interface (UI) or submit requests directly from the command line to invoke the functionality of any of these namespaces.

See MPS SDK Reference for the available Providers and Namespaces installed with the Microsoft Provisioning Framework.