What is MPF?

Microsoft® Provisioning Framework is a platform for building, deploying, managing, and extending hosted services running on Windows® operating systems. MPF contains the following components.

Provisioning framework The framework contains both client and server components. The client and SOAP ISAPI receive incoming provisioning requests. The following server components manage transaction processing and data storage.

MPF security is tightly integrated with Windows. NT authentication and authorization mechanisms employed by external services such as Active Directory. Only authorized users can execute provisioning requests.
Provisioning Manager Provisioning Manager is the administration console for the framework, used to configure and monitor the components in an MPF installation.
Standard providers and namespaces MPF ships with a number of providers and named procedures that support:
  • Microsoft. Active Directory.
  • Execution of scripts and commands
  • Error remapping for localization and context-sensitive applications
  • Windows file system and registry
  • HTTP and SOAP requests
  • SQL Server
  • Application installation using Microsoft. Windows. Installer

MPF also has an SDK with Visual Studio add-ins that simplify development of custom providers for provisioning applications that require unique solutions.
Application programming interfaces (APIs) The MPF APIs contain methods used to submit requests to the provisioning framework and to develop custom providers.

See Also

Architecture, What is Provisioning?, Who Uses MPF?

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