The Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator (MSDTC) service is a component of modern versions of Microsoft Windows that is responsible for coordinating transactions that span multiple resource managers, such as databases, message queues, and file systems. MSDTC is included in Windows 2000 and later operating systems, and is also available for Windows NT 4.0. MSDTC performs the transaction coordination role for components, usually with COM and .NET architectures. In MSDTC terminology, the director is called the transaction manager. By default, the Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator (MSDTC) service is installed with Windows 2000. It cannot be uninstalled through Add/Remove Programs.

In other words, transaction processing is a software technology that makes distributed computing reliable. You can see a transaction as a unit of work in which a series of operations occur. The transaction (with its ACID properties) is providing protection in the case when one or more of these operations fail at any point in time. By using transactions, you can vastly simplify the error recovery for your system.

The main actors in a transaction are: the transaction manager (MSDTC), the initiator (the application which started the transaction) and the resource managers (the entities that manage data and work). The flow of actions in a simplified form is:

1. The client application (the initiator) begins a transaction by requesting one from the transaction manager;

2. The client app asks the resource managers to do work as part of the same transaction; during this step, the resource managers register with the transaction manager for that transaction (“they enlist”);

3. The client app commits the transaction;

4. The transaction manager coordinates with the resource managers to ensure that all succeed to do the requested work or none of the work if done, thus maintaining the ACID properties.

Source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Distributed_Transaction_Coordinator

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/florinlazar/2004/03/04/what-is-msdtc-and-why-do-i-need-to-care-about-it/