To collect a cost-center value at deployment time you must expose it as a runtime variable in the Calm/Self-Service blueprint. Because categories can only be attached to the resulting VM programmatically, add a post-provisioning task that reads the runtime variable and calls the Prism Central REST API to set category CostCenter= on the VM. After these two elements are in place, publish the blueprint to the Marketplace so every requester is prompted for (and charged back by) their own cost-center value.

A. Pre-defined variables are fixed at design time; the requester is never prompted, so each VM would carry the same cost-center value.

C. Environment variables are bound to the whole environment, not supplied per request, so individual requesters cannot enter their own cost center.

D. A Project can force a fixed category but cannot accept a variable entered at request time; the user input requirement is unmet.

1. Nutanix Prism Central Self-Service Administration Guide v6.1, “Blueprint Variables – Runtime Variables”, p. 36-38.

2. Nutanix Calm User Guide v3.6, “Creating Tasks to Call Prism Central API”, p. 112-114.

3. Nutanix Cost Governance Guide v6.10, “Using Categories for Charge-Back (CostCenter)”, p. 7-8.

4. Nutanix Prism REST API Reference v6.10, Section /blueprints/{uuid}/categories, Example 2 “Assign Category via Task”.