CloudFormation Basics

This chapter offers a quick explanation of AWS CloudFormation and its basic concepts.

CloudFormation Templates

AWS CloudFormation is a framework for creating, managing and provisioning AWS resources through the use of templates developed by Amazon. Such a template can be written using the CloudFormation specification in either JSON or YAML.

For example, a CloudFormation template for creating an EC2 instance using the ami-79873901 image and t2.micro instance type would look like this:

AWSTemplateFormatVersion: "2010-09-09"
Resources:
  instanceName:
    Type: "AWS::EC2::Instance"
    Properties:
      ImageId: "ami-79873901"
      InstanceType: "t2.micro"

For the full capabilities and more information about the specification of CloudFormation templates, please refer to the latest CloudFormation User Guide.

CloudFormation Stacks

In addition to provisioning Amazon resources with CloudFormation, existing resources created through CloudFormation can be changed by updating the template after deployment.

Each deployment of a CloudFormation template results in a so-called stack. This CloudFormation stack is the representation of the CloudFormation template and its corresponding resources on the AWS platform. Changes to the template of a created stack are directly reflected in the resources corresponding to that stack and updated accordingly. This allows the user to manage his CloudFormation stacks even after deployment.

Additional Info

Additional information about AWS CloudFormation can be found here:

• User Guide
• API Reference
• Product Page