Lab: Design Service Broker Catalog with Approval & Quotas

VCF 9.0Intermediatevcap-advanced⏱ 120 min

Objectives

Create end-to-end Service Broker experience: custom form with conditional fields, tiered approval policy, lease policy, and quota enforcement.

Prerequisites

VCF lab environment deployed and operational

Lab Environment

Standard VCF lab environment for Advanced VCF 9.0 Automation

Tasks

Task 1 Lab: Design Service Broker Catalog with Approval & Quotas

Create end-to-end Service Broker experience: custom form with conditional fields, tiered approval policy, lease policy, and quota enforcement.

Step 1

Create org-level shared template "Standard-VM" with inputs: name, environment, vcpu, memory

Step 2

Build custom form with conditional field: if environment=prod, require approval_ticket input

Step 3

Add dynamic dropdown for cost_center from external API

Step 4

Set up tiered approval: auto-approve dev <$500, require manager for prod >$1000

Step 5

Configure lease policy: dev=30 days with 1 extension, prod=365 days

Step 6

Set quota policy: max 5 VMs per dev user, max 2 concurrent deployments

Step 7

Request from Service Broker as dev user, then prod user

Step 8

Verify approval routing based on cost/environment

Validation Gate

Check: Verify lab completion

Expected: Lab exercise completed successfully

Common Errors

Service catalog items with unclear descriptions

Fix: Catalog items must describe what the user gets, not how it's built. 'Deploy 3-tier app' is unclear. 'Web Application Environment: 1 web server, 1 app server, 1 database, pre-configured networking and security' tells the user exactly what they're requesting.

Not setting resource quotas per project

Fix: Without quotas, a single project can consume the entire cluster. Configure per-project quotas: max VMs, max CPU, max memory, max storage. Quotas should align with cluster capacity planning — total allocated quotas should not exceed cluster capacity.

Catalog items without Day-2 actions configured

Fix: Users need to resize, snapshot, reconfigure, and destroy resources after deployment. Without Day-2 actions, every post-deployment change requires an admin ticket. Configure common Day-2 actions: resize (change T-shirt size), snapshot, add disk, power operations.

Final Validation

Lab completed successfully

✓ All steps completed → No errors observed

Cleanup / Restore

• Revert to snapshot if needed

Design Reflection (VCDX)

Service catalog design demonstrates consumption architecture thinking. VCDX panelists evaluate whether your catalog enables genuine self-service or is just a GUI wrapper over manual processes.

⚠ Known Pitfalls (from Community KB)

Catalog items that create resources but provide no Day-2 management — users are stuck after deployment.

Quotas that don't align with cluster capacity — over-committed quotas cause deployment failures.

Mark complete