Our test environment for AI operations is a real datacenter: VMware Cloud Foundation on rented bare metal. Upgrades, expiring certificates, storage, DNS, incidents — and AI agents working in it every day, under supervision. We chose a live environment on purpose. A demo forgives mistakes; a datacenter does not. More than 200 field notes document what worked and what broke. Next: why you cannot simply point an agent at vCenter. #opensource #selfhosted #AIAgents #AIOps #AgenticOps