Managing COM+ partitions in Active Directory

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

Managing COM+ partitions in Active Directory

COM+ partitions stored in Active Directory are used to map a local COM+ partition, which stores the actual COM+ application, to specific users or organizational units within your enterprise. COM+ applications are groups of COM components developed to work together to make use of COM+ services such as queuing, role-based security, and so on.

There are two types of COM+ partitions: COM+ partitions stored in Active Directory and local COM+ partitions stored on application servers. Using COM+ partitions stored in Active Directory, you can assign domain users and entire organizational units to applications stored in local COM+ partitions. Local COM+ partitions are application containers used to manage multiple instances of COM+ applications on a single application server.

A local COM+ partition can only store one instance of an application. In other words, if you needed to make two or more versions of the same application (AppX 1.0 and AppX 2.0) available to domain users, then you would need to create two separate local COM+ partitions on an application server and associate (or link) them with two separate COM+ partitions in Active Directory. For more information about associating COM+ partitions, see Managing COM+ partition sets in Active Directory.

Each COM+ partition is configured and managed separately, according to the specific needs of its users.

Note

• COM+ partitions in Active Directory are not available from domain controllers running Windows 2000.