The following is the detailed overview of the functionality provided by Heat to the other components of OpenStack:
Heat uses templates: A text-based template file is used to describe the infrastructure of the cloud platform. This file is easily readable and can also be checked into version control.
Resources are defined in a template: These are the building blocks of the cloud platform which include servers, floating IP addresses, disk volumes, users, security groups, and other types.
Heat supports the autoscaling of servers and applications: The OpenStack Ceilometer component is used with Heat component to achieve autoscaling of virtual machine instances as well as applications running on top of them.
Heat templates include relationships between resource types: A relationship is specified between different types of resources inside a Heat template. Heat uses these relationships to associate them with each other. A typical example of this can be a disk volume attached...