Heat (the Orchestration service for OpenStack) uses template files to orchestrate resources and services for OpenStack. These template files are in fact text files that are created by the administrators. These templates support version control mechanisms.

Resources in a template file can be anything, including server instances, floating IP addresses, disk volumes, security policies or groups, and cloud users.

Heat along with the telemetry component (called Ceilometer) offers an autoscaling feature which is helpful in dynamic resource allocation.

The relationship between resources can also be specified in a template. For example, a disk volume can be associated with a server instance.

The entire life cycle of an instance or an application on an instance can be managed by Heat. A stack can be modified to make any changes in the cloud infrastructure. Heat will implement the modifications into the cloud after reading the newly updated template.

Heat was designed for effective management of...