Microsoft Provisioning Framework (MPF) provides the framework and engine for provisioning requests in Microsoft Provisioning System. Provisioning Manager is a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in that provides a graphical user interface (UI) for managing MPF components from a single server.
After you have installed Provisioning Manager on the servers running MPF client components, you can use Provisioning Manager to manage each provisioning server and namespace, as well as all credentials implemented in MPF.
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.
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.
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.
The Provisioning Queue Manager service runs as a Windows 2000 service. 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.
The Provisioning Auditing and Recovery service installs by default when you install the transaction log database component of MPF; it runs as a Windows 2000 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.
The transaction log stores short-term information about each MPF transaction. This data store is an SQL 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.
The audit log is an SQL 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.
Namespaces provide the core functionality for provisioning services and resources. Namespaces consist of one or more procedures that implement specific functionality.
Provider namespaces implement the functionality required to maintain and manage provisioning services using a specific underlying provider, such as Active Directory, Internet Information Services (IIS), or Exchange.
Some namespaces do not call a provider, but call other procedures. Namespaces of this type include the standard namespaces provided with MPF, such as the Sample Namespace, and the other namespaces that are included in the Microsoft Provisioning System, such as the Managed Active Directory namespace.
The provider namespaces and other standard namespaces that are installed by default with MPF include the following:
For more information on MPF namespaces, see Namespaces in Provisioning Manager Help and Providers and namespaces.
Credentials consist of an account domain, user name, and password used to process procedures. By default, MPF uses MPFServiceAcct credentials, if you do not have impersonation enabled, or the caller's credentials, if you do have impersonation enabled. Using Provisioning Manager, you can specify credentials for one or more other accounts that can be used to process specific procedures.
For more information on MPF credentials, see Credentials in Provisioning Manager Help.