You can provision environments on clouds through HEAT-based blueprints that you model
on the blueprint design server. Heat-based blueprints use OpenStack Heat Orchestration
Templates to model the infrastructure of a cloud environment, including its virtual images,
network, and storage. A heat-based blueprint can also include software components to be deployed in
the environment.
When you have modeled the cloud environment and software components in the blueprint, you can
create or update a cloud environment based on that blueprint. The blueprint design server runs
this provisioning or updating by using a Heat engine. If the blueprint includes software
components, the provisioning or updating process also deploys those components through the
automation processes that are specified in the blueprint. For example, blueprints can use
component processes on the IBM® UrbanCode™ Deploy
server. Blueprints can also specify other automation details, such as the deployment order for
components.
You edit this type of blueprint in the blueprint designer. See Modeling environments for clouds through OpenStack Heat.
The resources in a blueprint are instances of resource types. For more information about
specific types, see Heat resource types.
A simple blueprint has the following sections:
- Description
- The description is a text field that describes the blueprint.
- Parameters
- The parameters section is a list of values that you can refer to from resources. You
can specify default values for these parameters in the blueprint, in a configuration
file, or at provisioning time.
- Outputs
- Blueprints can have a list of output parameters.
- Resources
- The resources in a blueprint represent the resources in the provisioned environment,
including virtual images, disks, and software components.
The following resources are
commonly found in this type of blueprint:
- Virtual machines (compute nodes)
- Virtual machine resources (of the type OS::Nova::Server)
include information about the virtual image for the machine and the networks to
which the virtual machine is connected.
- Software components and software configurations
- Software components (of the type IBM::UrbanCode::SoftwareDeploy::UCD for IBM UrbanCode Deploy components and of the type OS::Heat::SoftwareConfig for other
pieces of software) represent deployment instances of software. In most cases,
components also have a resource of the type IBM::UrbanCode::SoftwareConfig::UCD, which represents configuration properties for the component, such as its
application and any properties that it has.
Blueprints also often have a
resource that represents the IBM UrbanCode Deploy agent. By default, this resource is named
ucd_agent_install_win or
ucd_agent_install_linux, based on the operating system of the
virtual machine that is used in the blueprint. It contains the code to install
an agent on the virtual machines.
- Storage volumes and volume attachments
- Storage volumes (of the type OS::Cinder::Volume) represent new
virtual disks that are created when the blueprint is provisioned. Storage volume
attachments (of the type OS::Cinder::VolumeAttachment) represent
the connection of a virtual machine to a new or existing storage volume.
- Resource trees
- The resource tree resource (of the type IBM::UrbanCode::ResourceTree) represents changes or additions to the resource tree on the IBM UrbanCode Deploy server. Other resources, such as virtual images, refer to the properties of the
resource tree, such as the location of the server. The resource tree resource also
specifies the name of the application that the blueprint relates to.
- Network ports
- When you add a network to a blueprint, the editor adds a resource of the type
OS::Neutron::Port, which represents a port on the specified
network.
