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.
How an interactive PowerShell script grew into a catalog item that builds complete nested VCF 9.1 instances from one request form. The design rules that made it survivable, and the traps behind them.
Terraform has plan. Kubernetes has –dry-run. Your vRO workflows have nothing, unless you give them a validateOnly input and pass it down. The most valuable checkbox in the lab factory.
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’.
Stage 2 of the lab factory: a vRO workflow turns an environment number into a VCF 9.1 deployment spec, validates it and starts bringup, because the request dies long before the eight-hour build does.