Main Aim of Heat is to orchestrate complex deployments on openstack. Not just that you can install any app but you can also write user-data scripts to perform required configurations after installation of app. For example if you install mysql you can also make a user and assign any privileges to it. Just use the proper commands according to the flavor of Linux that you are using and you are done. No need to login to instance for configurations.

You can edit/make your template in order to get more parameters and place them in proper places in template to have configurations done.

hope that helps!!

Hi,

There are several ways to achieve a good working configuration, this is the method I use the most. "User_data" can take multiple formats but using 'raw' is simple to use.

Here in my example I build a server called PS and run what is essentially a bash script. This template also uses 'str_replace' to substitute values from the 'parameters' section of the Heat template.

PS:
    type: OS::Nova::Server
    properties:
      name: PS
      image: RGB_CloudImage_Build_6.3
      flavor: m1.RGB_large
      key_name: { get_param: Key_name }
      user_data: 
        str_replace:
           template: |
              #!/bin/bash -v
              yum -y install aim
              echo "oss_ip_address  OSS  OSS.rgbnetworks.com" >> /etc/hosts
              echo "ads_ip_address  ADS  ADS.rgbnetworks.com" >> /etc/hosts
              echo "10.5.0.20  AWE  AWE.rgbnetworks.com" >> /etc/hosts
              ip link set dev eth0 mtu 1450
              current_ip=`curl -s http://169.254.169.254/1.0/meta-data/local-ipv4`
              echo "$current_ip $current_hostname $current_hostname.rgbnetworks.com" >> /etc/hosts
              sed -i "s/client_host = ADS/client_host = AWE/" /opt/rgb/etc/abrain.config
              service aim restart
           params:
              ads_ip_address: { get_param: ADS_address }
              oss_ip_address: { get_param: OSS_address }