Info

• Templates have to be uploaded in S3 and then referenced in CloudFormation
• To update a template, we can’t edit previous ones. We have to reupload a new version of the template to AWS
• Deleting a stack deletes every single artifact that was created by CloudFormation.

Components

1. Resources: your AWS resources declared in the template (MANDATORY)
2. Parameters: the dynamic inputs for your template
3. Mappings: the static variables for your template
4. Outputs: References to what has been created
5. Conditionals: List of conditions to perform resource creation
6. Metadata

Templates helpers:

1. References
2. Functions

Benefits

• Infrastructure as code
  • No resources are manually created, which is excellent for control
  • The code can be version controlled for example using git
  • Changes to the infrastructure are reviewed through code
• Cost
  • Each resources within the stack is stagged with an identifier so you can easily see how much a stack costs you
  • You can estimate the costs of your resources using the CloudFormation template
  • Savings strategy: In Dev, you could automation deletion of templates at 5 PM and recreated at 8 AM, safely
• Productivity
  • Ability to destroy and re-create an infrastructure on the cloud on the fly
  • Automated generation of Diagram for your templates!
• Separation of concern: create many stacks for many apps, and many layers. Ex:
  • VPC stacks
  • Network stacks
  • App stacks
• Don’t re-invent the wheel
  • Leverage existing templates on the web!
  • Leverage the documentation

Deploying Cloud Formation

• Manual Way
  • Editing templates in the CloudFormation Designer
  • Using the console to input parameters, etc
• Automated Way
  • Editing templates in a YAML file
  • Using the AWS CLI to deploy the templates ( Recommended )

Resources

• Resources represent the different AWS Components that will be created and configured