A virtual-computing environment definition language automates the deployment of a virtualized computing environment. A set of basic requirements of a planned virtual computing environment is described in the definition language to provide a concise, textual representation of the planned environment's architecture. This representation also predicts the planned environment's performance characteristics as a function of expected workloads, such as expected numbers of concurrent users or expected numbers of concurrent transactions. The definition-language representation is then translated into an orchestration template from which virtual resources are provisioned and the virtual-computing environment deployed.