Um, no, that is the template for OpenStack Heat project.
So you define the template and create a stack by feeding the template to Heat. And heat does provide basically Infrastructure as a Code - so whole stack of resources is being created and handled by it.
You can also define a parameters that Heat will provide as output, it can be IPs, key names, resources UUIDs - basically any parameter. So as a result you will get a fully configured stack with installed software to it. You can also update resources with same sort of template.

You can check for Heat docs here:
https://docs.openstack.org/heat/latest/

But maybe I get wrong your idea or just don't fully understand it...


On Mon, Dec 11, 2023, 18:18 <lostghost1@yandex.ru> wrote:
Reading more about it - I feel like it is. The idea I have currently is, say I have a manifest that describes desired system state - and a tool to work with such a template. I pass the template as OS::Heat::SoftwareConfig and deploy with OS::Heat::SoftwareDeployment. From what I gather, this by itself doesn't do anything - my tool has to query this data, act upon it, then signal that the deployment is done. Is this correct? And I can use practically any tool I want as long as it follows this pattern?

Dmitriy Rabotyagov wrote:
> I think you already have all tools for doing that kinda.
> 1. You can use cloud-init for initial system configuration, which can
> initially bootstrap and configure software for you. For example, you can do
> smth like Canonical MAAS does to leverage cloud-init + curtin to do pretty
> much anything you want. And cloud-init is usually part of most cloud images
> as of today.
> 2. You can also leverage Heat to do pretty much the same with CloudConfig
> resource or even use SoftwareConfig/SoftwareComponent resources to setup
> and configure software on the provisioned vm right away.
> Isn't that what you're looking for?
> On Mon, Dec 11, 2023, 08:57 lostghost1@yandex.ru wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > Sorry if this has been asked already, but is it feasible to use OpenStack
> > to configure running systems - including virtual instances, containers, and
> > the physical nodes themselves. I know that conceptually OpenStack takes a
> > hands-off approach - it deals with images in abstract and further
> > configuration is delegated to tools such as Ansible. Same for bare metal
> > nodes - you provision them with Ironic, flash an image to them, and that's
> > where configuaration ends for OpenStack. At least this is how I understand
> > it, may be wrong.
> > I was thinking about introducing systems configuration as a first-class
> > concept into OpenStack - that means integration with the package manager,
> > writing of config files from templates, filesystem management in general.
> > The most well thought-out "solution" that there is for systems
> > configuration is Nix in my opinion. I could intergrate it into OpenStack, I
> > could write my own package manager. I haven't decided yet, these are just
> > ideas for a pet project.
> > So if I were to do such a thing, how would I go about achieving it?
> > Obviously I would need to write a Horizon console module for the web UI.
> > But beyond that I'd also need integration with other components. What do
> > you all think?
> >