You can use Provisioning Manager to administer the provisioning server centrally. You can also manage the way transactions are processed by the server. In addition, with Provisioning Manager, you can perform these tasks whether the MPF components are installed on a single computer or distributed across multiple computers.

• Client-A client receives incoming provisioning requests and routes them to the appropriate MPF components, including each provisioning engine and queue manager. You can use Provisioning Manager to customize properties that control how the provisioning engine and queue manager handle connections, including how they handle load balancing and authentication.

  For more information on clients and how to manage them, see Clients and Administering clients in the Provisioning Manager Help.

• Provisioning engine-The provisioning engine is a transaction coordinator that executes MPF requests in real time. It receives MPF requests from each client and queue manager, then attempts to parse, expand, and route these requests to specified providers. The provisioning engine processes requests by using the run-time properties that are defined in the configuration database. Using Provisioning Manager, you can activate and deactivate any provisioning engine and customize the properties that determine how it executes provisioning requests. You can also customize how security is applied to incoming requests.

  For more information on provisioning engines and how to manage them, see Provisioning engines and Administering provisioning engines in the Provisioning Manager Help.

• Queue manager-The Provisioning Queue Manager service is a service that runs on Microsoft Windows. A queue manager acts as a transaction coordinator for queued requests. The queue manager stores in a queue for later processing any MPF requests that do not need to be executed immediately. The queue manager forwards each queued request to a provisioning engine that has available capacity. Using Provisioning Manager, you can activate, deactivate, start, stop, and pause an individual queue manager. You can also customize the properties that determine how the Provisioning Queue Manager service executes MPF requests. In addition, you can customize how security is applied to incoming requests.

  For more information on queue managers and how to manage them, see Queue managers and Administering queue managers in the Provisioning Manager Help.

• Auditing and recovery manager-The Provisioning Auditing and Recovery service installs by default when you install the transaction log database component of MPF; it runs as a Windows service. Each transaction log and audit log is bound to a specific auditing and recovery manager that constantly monitors MPF components and detects provisioning engine failures.

  For more information on auditing and recovery managers and how to manage them, see Auditing and recovery managers and Administering auditing and recovery managers in the Provisioning Manager Help.

• Transaction log-The transaction log stores short-term information about each MPF transaction. This data store is a SQL Server database. If a transaction fails to complete, information from the database can be used to successfully roll back the transaction. You can specify whether to delete data for completed and failed transactions or log the data in the audit log database. Using Provisioning Manager, you can activate and deactivate the database for any transaction log.

  For more information on transaction logs and how to manage them, see Transaction logs and Administering transaction logs in the Provisioning Manager Help.

• Audit log-The audit log is a SQL Server database that serves as a repository for data mining. The audit log contains details about transactions, including the number of transactions and the success or failure of each transaction. You can specify whether to implement auditing for the provisioning engine and for each procedure.

  For more information on the audit log and how to manage it, see Audit log and Administering the audit log in the Provisioning Manager Help.