One catalog request, one fully built, domain-joined Windows Server 2025 with its agents, a validation report, and no trace of the tooling that built it. The three-layer design, and why each seam is where it is.
VCF Automation 9.1 has two provisioning models, as two kinds of organisation. I ran the same use cases through both, from Windows VMs to nested ESXi. The honest scorecard, and how each case is done.
A 400-line menu-driven PowerShell script became a cloud template, two vRO actions and two subscriptions. Where each behaviour belongs, four non-obvious decisions, and the ‘yes’ that isn’t ’true’.