You can use Heat stacks to automate the deployment of infrastructure, services, and applications.

A stack can configure the automated creation of most OpenStack resources, including instances, floating IP addresses, volumes, security groups, and users. To create a stack, you use an orchestration template that defines the parameters for automating the deployment of infrastructure, services, and applications.

You can also create a stack that combines an orchestration template with an environment file. An environment file supplies a unique set of values to the parameters defined by the template. By using environment files with templates, you can create many unique stacks from a single template.

VMware Integrated OpenStack supports the native OpenStack Heat Orchestration Template (HOT) format through a REST API and the Amazon Web Services (AWS) CloudFormation template format through a Query API that is compatible with CloudFormation.

For information about how to create template and environment files for your Heat stacks, see Template Guide in the OpenStack documentation.