OpenStack Heat : Basics and Examples

OpenStack Heat is the main project in the OpenStack Orchestration program to launch multiple composite cloud applications based on templates. We talked about Chef Software, OpenStack Cloud and Docker. Example of using OpenStack Heat Template can be like to provide Rackspace Deployment Services. If one can custom code own OpenStack Heat Template, it is possible to deploy the needed instance without practically any manual intervention or typing commands. This can be counted as an example of Automation in the Cloud.

 

OpenStack Heat : Basics

 

OpenStack Heat has own dedicated webpages and chapters :

API server, CFN, Constraint, Dependency, Environment, Heat Orchestration Template, Input parameters, Metadata, Multi-region, Nested resource, Nested stack, Nova Instance metadata – all are specific defined terminologies. OpenStack Heat also endeavors to provide compatibility with the AWS CloudFormation template format, so that many existing CloudFormation templates can be launched on OpenStack. An OpenStack Heat template describes the infrastructure for a cloud application in a text file format which is readable and writable by humans and can be checked into version control in Git.
Solum is a separate project, which converts code into a managed application running on an OpenStack cloud on simple click, their explanation of how Solum works can provide idea about OpenStack Heat to the reader :

 

OpenStack Heat : Examples

 

Dedicated guide to write template can be found here :

Working example can be :

An example of OpenStack Heat template can be given with vestacp :

vestacp simply can be installed using bash script in traditional way :

But with OpenStack Heat template we need not to even type one line command. For the above example instance, app specific config is :

while tenant specific config is :

If a developer wants to create own template and provide Service as standalone service provider, OpenStack Heat can fully cover the identity / branding of the original service provider.