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CloudFormation

https://aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/

Docs: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/index.html

tip

The Quick Starts page contains many CloudFormation templates ready to use: https://aws.amazon.com/quickstart

https://github.com/donnemartin/awesome-aws#cloudformation

Validate Infrastructure-as-code (IaC) or infrastructure/service compositions such as CloudFormation Templates, CloudFormation ChangeSets, Terraform JSON configuration files, Kubernetes configurations - https://github.com/aws-cloudformation/cloudformation-guard

Static analysis to find misconfigurations and vulnerabilities - https://www.checkov.io - https://github.com/bridgecrewio/checkov

https://github.com/Sceptre/sceptre - https://docs.sceptre-project.org

Linter: https://github.com/aws-cloudformation/cfn-lint

Test AWS CloudFormation templates - https://github.com/aws-ia/taskcat - https://aws-ia.github.io/taskcat

Generate CloudFormation / Terraform / Troposphere templates from your existing AWS resources - https://github.com/iann0036/former2

CloudFormation vs Terraform in 2022 - https://cloudonaut.io/cloudformation-vs-terraform

Declarative: you define the end state of your infrastructure, and CloudFormation figures out how to achieve it.

Think of a template as a class, and a stack as an object. The template exists only once, whereas many stacks can be created from the same template. (AWS in Action p. 128)

Never store sensitive information (such as credentials and access keys) in a template file.

A stack can be created using the console or the CLI.

Important

The AMI ID is region-specific, that is, the AMI ID of the latest Amazon Linux is different in us-east-1 and us-west-1. Is important to set the right value in CloudFormation templates.

Pros and cons​

What is AWS Cloudformation? Pros and Cons? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Sh9OySCyb4

From "Moving away from CDK" - https://sst.dev/blog/moving-away-from-cdk

CloudFormation stacks have resource limits. Meaning that if you have more than 500 resources in a stack, you need to move them out to a new stack. This happens with larger teams. They’ll need to refactor their stacks often. (...) When you deploy an app with these two stacks, you’ll get a different cyclical dependency error. Here CloudFormation cannot deploy this because these stacks depend on each other.

A consequence of CloudFormation being a black box is that it handles any errors internally. So you’ll see the error from CloudFormation as opposed to the underlying error with the resource. This is the reason why many AWS deployment errors are cryptic and vague.

CDK supports multi-region deployments. But it does this via a Custom Resource. The problem is that CloudFormation is a single-region service. There’s no way to link stacks across regions. So when you deploy stacks across regions you’ll rely on Custom Resources to share references across them.

Learn​

https://mng.workshop.aws/cloudformation.html

https://www.udacity.com/course/deploy-infrastructure-as-code--cd12352

Sample templates​

Template sections​

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/template-anatomy.html

All sections are optional except Resources. The order of the sections does not matter.

AWSTemplateFormatVersion: 2010-09-09

Description: >
  Here are some details about
  the template.

Parameters:
  InstanceType:
    Type: String
    Default: t2.micro
    AllowedValues:
      - t2.micro
      - m1.small
      - m1.large
    Description: Enter t2.micro, m1.small, or m1.large. Default is t2.micro.

Resources:
  MyEC2Instance:
    Type: "AWS::EC2::Instance"
    Properties:
      ImageId: "ami-0ff8a91507f77f867"

Outputs:
  StackVPC:
    Description: The ID of the VPC
    Value: !Ref MyVPC
    Export:
      Name: !Sub "${AWS::StackName}-VPCID"

Format version AWSTemplateFormatVersion

warning

Always specify AWSTemplateFormatVersion: 2010-09-09. Otherwise, CloudFormation will use whatever version is the latest one, which can cause problems if new versions are introduced.

Description

Parameters

Resources

Outputs

Metadata

Intrinsic functions​

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/intrinsic-function-reference-sub.html

EC2 user data​

Fn::Base64 docs: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/intrinsic-function-reference-base64.html

Resources:
  Instance:
    Type: 'AWS::EC2::Instance'
    Properties:
      UserData: !Base64 |
        #!/bin/bash -ex
        yum -y update
Resources:
  Instance:
    Type: 'AWS::EC2::Instance'
    Properties:
      UserData:
        'Fn::Base64': !Sub |
          #!/bin/bash -ex
          /opt/aws/bin/cfn-signal -e 0 --stack ${AWS::StackName} --resource Instance --region ${AWS::Region}

CLI​

CLI Reference: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/cloudformation/index.html

Create stack: aws cloudformation create-stack --stack-name myStackName --region us-east-1 --template-body file://myTemplate.yml

Update stack: aws cloudformation update-stack --stack-name myStackName --region us-east-1 --template-body file://myTemplate.yml

Describe stack: aws cloudformation describe-stacks --stack-name myStackName

Delete stack: aws cloudformation delete-stack --stack-name myStackName

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/cfn-console-create-stacks-quick-create-links.html

For example: https://us-east-1.console.aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/home?region=us-east-1#/stacks/create/review?templateURL=https://s3.amazonaws.com/awsinaction-code3/chapter05/ec2-os-update.yaml&stack-Name=ec2-os-update