Provision Hosted Services
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
Providers to review the functionality of other providers included with MPS.
Non-Provider 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 Run 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.
Run XML Provisioning Requests for a procedure you can use to submit XML requests from the ASP.NET Web Service to the Provisioning Engine.