Skip to main content

OpenStack Heat

OpenStack Heat is the orchestration component of OpenStack that automates the deployment and lifecycle management of cloud applications and infrastructure using template-driven workflows (infrastructure automation).

  • Template-based orchestration of OpenStack resources using the Heat Orchestration Template (HOT) format (infrastructure automation).
  • Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) modeling for compute, storage, networking, and higher-level services in OpenStack clouds (infrastructure-as-code).
  • Support for stack creation, update, rollback, and deletion, including dependency handling between resources (deployment orchestration).
  • Integration with other OpenStack services such as Nova, Neutron, Cinder, and Keystone to provision and manage resources (cloud platform integration).
  • Support for autoscaling, resource signaling, and policy-driven adjustments of deployed stacks (capacity management).

More About OpenStack Heat

OpenStack Heat provides orchestration for OpenStack-based clouds by enabling users to define and manage application and infrastructure topologies through templates (infrastructure automation). It addresses the problem of consistently provisioning and updating complex environments that span compute, storage, networking, and related services in OpenStack. By expressing these environments as code, Heat supports repeatable deployments and lifecycle operations in private, public, and hybrid OpenStack installations (infrastructure-as-code).

The core concept in Heat is the stack, which is a collection of resources defined in a template (deployment orchestration). Heat supports a native template language called Heat Orchestration Template (HOT), and also provides support for AWS CloudFormation-compatible templates, as documented by the project (template-based orchestration). Templates describe resources such as servers, volumes, networks, subnets, load balancers, and security groups, along with their parameters, outputs, and inter-resource dependencies.

Heat integrates with multiple OpenStack services via their APIs (cloud platform integration). For example, it works with Nova for compute instances, Neutron for networking, Cinder for block storage, Keystone for authentication, and other OpenStack services where resources are exposed. Through this integration, Heat coordinates the creation and configuration of resources in the correct order based on dependencies, and it monitors stack status through the lifecycle of deployments.

Enterprise users apply Heat to model multi-tier applications, reference architectures, and standardized environment blueprints for development, testing, and production (cloud infrastructure management). Operators can define templates as version-controlled artifacts, parameterize them for different environments, and use Heat to perform create, update, and delete operations on stacks. Heat supports rollback behavior when updates fail and allows resource signaling and autoscaling policies, enabling scaling groups that adjust capacity based on metrics or events (capacity management).

From an architectural perspective, Heat includes an orchestration engine, a Representational State Transfer (REST) Application Programming Interface (API), a template language, and resource plug-ins that map template resources to underlying OpenStack APIs (orchestration engine). Its plugin model allows extensions for additional resource types and integrations with other OpenStack or external systems, as described in project documentation (extensibility). In an enterprise catalog or directory, OpenStack Heat fits under cloud orchestration, IaC, and OpenStack platform management, where it functions as the orchestration layer that coordinates the provisioning and lifecycle of OpenStack-based infrastructure and applications.