Provision Hosted Services

Provision Hosted Services

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Provision Hosted Services

You can use Microsoft Provisioning System (MPS) to automate provisioning tasks for hosted services such as Hosted Exchange and Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services hosting services. In general, this will involve the use of MPS components such as managed namespaces, named procedures, providers, XML provisioning requests, and the Provisioning Engine.

Note

You must install and configure the hosted services you are offering in your environment before you install and configure MPS components.

Managed namespaces are the components that contain the common procedures you will use to provision hosted services. MPS includes numerous managed namespaces that are explicitly designed by Microsoft to provide common sets of related provisioning actions that apply to specific hosted services, including enhancements of the low-level provider with which each one is associated. These enhancements group related procedures in to a single named procedure.

For example, the CreateCustomerSite procedure of the Managed SharePoint 2007 Namespace contains logic that integrates low-level Active Directory Provider namespace methods with those in the SharePoint 2007 Provider in to a single named procedure to accomplish the following provisioning actions:

Create a site for a specified customer.
Create the site quota.
Create a pointer to the site in the customer's organizational unit (OU).

For example, the Managed Customer Directory Integration Namespace enables you to assign the CDI plan to a customer organization, CDI-enable users in that organization, and modify or delete the CDI service for specific users.

Action Steps for Provisioning Hosted Services

To quickly accomplish a wide variety of provisioning actions that apply to your hosted services, use the named procedures of the MPS managed namespaces. The remainder of this section summarizes steps to implement the provisioning of hosted services using MPS managed namespaces.

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Prepare the Environment

To prepare the hosted services environment for provisioning, you need to review the following:

All hosted services that you intend to offer must be in place before installing MPS. See Build Hosted Exchange and Build Windows SharePoint Services Hosting for instructions on installing and configuring these hosted services.
See Assess Provisioning Methods for Hosted Services below to review the functionalities of managed namespaces and providers that are associated with your hosting services and determine which ones you require in your environment for provisioning.
See Minimal Service Provisioning Environment and Assess Provisioning Methods for Hosted Services below to decide on the appropriate deployment path based on your experience level as an MPS user or the hosted services you want to provision. Then perform the appropriate planning tasks related to the chosen configuration.
See MPS Deployment Tool to learn how to use the MPS Deployment Tool to schedule the installation of the managed namespaces and provider components you require for provisioning your hosted services. The MPS Deployment Tool enables you to schedule which MPS components you want to install and to target the servers where you want to install them.

Assess Provisioning Methods for Hosted Services

Understanding the methods available to you in MPS is the key to taking advantage of MPS in performing routine provisioning tasks. Review the functions of the managed namespaces that apply to the hosted services you want to provision. The following table shows which managed namespaces, providers, and APIs apply to each of the hosted services.

The following table provides a cross reference that shows which managed namespaces, providers, and APIs apply to each of the hosted services. See Microsoft Provisioning System SDK to review the topics that correspond to the managed namespaces and providers for a specific hosted service listed in the following table.

Table: Hosted Services, Managed Namespaces, and Providers Cross Reference

Hosted Service Managed Namespaces Providers

CDI Managed Customer Directory Integration Namespace
Hosted Customer Directory Integration NamespaceActive Directory Provider

Hosted E-MailManaged Email 2007 Namespace
Managed Mobility 2007 Namespace
Managed Unified Messaging Namespace
Hosted Email 2007 Namespace
Hosted Mobility 2007 NamespaceExchange 2007 Provider
Exchange 2007 Mobility Provider
Unified Messaging Provider

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Managed SharePoint 2007 Namespace
SharePoint 2007 Provider

DNS Not available DNS Provider

Active Directory Managed Active Directory Namespace
Hosted Active Directory Namespace Active Directory Provider

Note

In most cases, you will simply rely on the preconfigured methods provided by the managed namespaces. However, if you do not find the functionality you require, you should look at the provider API documentation available in Microsoft Provisioning System SDK.

For an overview of the solution providers and managed namespaces, see:

Additional Core Providers to review the functionality of other providers included with MPS.
Other MPS Managed Namespaces to review the functionality of other namespaces included with MPS.

Create Provisioning Requests

After using the MPS Deployment Tool to install the appropriate managed namespaces containing the named procedures you want to utilize to provision your hosted services, you will need to create an XML request that you can submit to the Provisioning Engine. In the request, you will specify the namespace and the procedure you are calling, in addition to the properties or other data required for the particular method you are invoking.

See Develop Custom XML Provisioning Requests to learn how to create provisioning requests.

Secure Provisioning Requests

If you are creating your own custom provisioning requests, you should strongly consider how you would provide secure execution of the request. For example, you can configure who can call a procedure and who can execute a procedure. This type of security primarily applies to delegating provisioning tasks to other users, such as customers, although you can also apply it to administrative personnel in the service provider environment.

See Microsoft Provisioning System Security to learn how to provide secure provisioning requests.

Submit XML Provisioning Requests

After you have created and secured an XML provisioning request and you are ready to submit it to the Provisioning Engine, you can use one of the methods described in Execute XML Provisioning Requests to do so. If you are not creating your own provisioning requests, you can take advantage of preconfigured requests and other methods exposed in the ASP.NET Web Service, from where you can submit a request.

Use ASP.NET Web Service Methods

The Microsoft Provisioning System SDK exposes public methods from a variety of MPS namespaces that you can use to provision your hosted services. You should review the functionality of the namespace methods and preconfigured requests exposed in the Web Service so you can decide whether the Web Service is sufficient to provision your hosted services.

For more information see:

Microsoft Provisioning System SDK for further details about the public methods exposed in the ASP.NET Web Service.
Execute XML Provisioning Requests for a procedure you can use to submit XML requests from the ASP.NET Web Service to the Provisioning Engine.