The N1 Grid Service Provisioning System is an object oriented, XML-based, distributed environment to solve enterprise system configuration, service provisioning, and application deployment needs. The provisioning system provides an extensible framework and environment that at a minimum provides the following functionality:
Common framework to build service provisioning automation
Maintains an audit log of changes over time
Compares the current state of target hosts with their expected state
Simulates a change to identify configuration problems
Implements a set of rules to govern automation execution
Notifies system administrators of problems and actions
Automatically manages version control
The N1 Grid Service Provisioning System implements a distributed environment in which object-oriented components are authored in XML scripts and orchestrated to follow execution plans for distribution, provisioning, and installation needs. For more information about N1 Grid Service Provisioning System basic concepts and terminology, see Chapter 1, N1 Grid Service Provisioning System 5.0 Overview, in N1 Grid Service Provisioning System 5.0 Installation Guide.