Note: This is the sixth post in my AWS SCS-C03 series. You can see the rest of the posts in the series using the link above.

• AWS CloudFormation:
  • Using YAML or JSON, you can create AWS resources in an easily-repeatable, automated manner
  • You decide what to create, and CloudFormation decides how to create it
  • YAML / JSON templates are used to create Stacks, which provision resources according to your instructions
    • If a Stack template is changed: the resources are changed and/or updated
    • If a Stack is deleted: the resources are deleted
  • CloudFormation creates real-world Physical Resources based on the Logical Resources you define in your template – the Logical ID is how you reference that resource elsewhere in the template, and CloudFormation maps it to the actual Physical Resource once created.
  • Parameters:
    • Template parameters¹: allows the user to insert values into the template at runtime to change options applied to resources
    • Pseudo parameters²: created and populated by AWS (ex. AWS::Region, AWS::StackName, etc) – although it’s much less flexible and limited

CloudFormation is definitely a hefty subject for me – I may come back and update this post in the near-future.

Thanks for reading!

-J

More reading:

• What is AWS CloudFormation? https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/Welcome.html

1. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/parameters-section-structure.html ↩︎
2. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/pseudo-parameter-reference.html ↩︎