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AWS CloudFormation

What is it​

A service that helps you model and configure your AWS and third-party resources, treating infrastructure as code (IaC).

What it's for​

Automate the provisioning and management of AWS resources, allowing you to create, update, and delete a set of related resources as a single unit (stack).

Use cases​

  • Provisioning complete environments (development, testing, production)
  • Automation of infrastructure creation and updates
  • Consistent and repeatable resource management
  • Infrastructure version control
  • Disaster recovery (quick environment recreation)

Key points​

  • Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Define your infrastructure in text files (JSON or YAML)
  • Stacks: Manage a set of related resources as a single unit
  • Templates: Use templates to describe the resources you want to provision
  • Automatic rollback: If stack creation or update fails, CloudFormation automatically reverts to the previous state
  • Version control: Manage versions of your infrastructure templates
  • Integration: Integrates with almost all AWS services

Comparison​

  • AWS CloudFormation: Enables automation of infrastructure provisioning, ensuring consistency, repeatability, and reducing manual errors. Ideal for complex environments and implementing DevOps practices.
  • Manual provisioning: Time-consuming, error-prone, and difficult to scale or replicate. Does not offer infrastructure version control.