(maint) Fix major performance regression in Puppet specs

 - This one seemingly innocuous change resulted in an increase
   of spec run time from 20 minutes to 2 hours on Win2003R2 and
   a series of type conversion errors in specs on Win2008R2 that
   it has been theorized are a result of memory pressure exerted
   by the change.  This has also caused slowdowns across the
   boards in other specs, and more diagnostic work is being
   performed to determine the root cause.
 - For now, this change is being merged as it clears out a number
   of CI issues that we're experiencing.
Merge branch 'maint/master/environment-performance-regression'

* maint/master/environment-performance-regression:
  (maint) Fix major performance regression in Puppet specs