With cloud infrastructure playing an increasingly important role in supporting businesses, managing resources and deployments is one of the “make or break” factors. AWS CloudFormation is one of the most powerful tools in Amazon Web Services (AWS) to help companies easily and consistently managieresources. The services allows administrators to code processes for deploying, configuring and managing AWS resources instead of manual operations which is a great benifit offered by the service. This blog covers getting started with AWS CloudFormation and how to use it for automating resource management as well, its key features & benefits along Quick LinksAdmin Service » Managed Database Related Blogs Amazon DocumentDBAutomation of Resource Management.

AWS CloudFormation : An Overview

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is the management of infrastructure using code and by AWS CloudFormation you can create/ launch /delete and rollback your cloud resources in an easy way.AWS CloudFormation provides a common language for describing and provisioning all the infrastructure resources in your cloud environment. Using JSON or YAML formatted files as templates, which defines the AWS resources to create and their configurations, dependencies between them.

CloudFormation is used for managing AWS resources like creating and deleting stacks — sometimes only to simplify deployment by treating infrastructure as code. This method has many benefits like version control, reproducibility and most importantly proper team oriented work.

Key Features of AWS CloudFormation

• CloudFormation is a Declarative Language. With CloudFormation it state what you want, not how to get there You declare the state of your infrastructure, and AWS takes care to provision and configure it.
• Stack Management : Provides stack resource management. A stack is a set of related Amazon Web Services resources you can manage as a whole. With One Command: For creating, updating or deleting stacks.
• Change Sets : You can create a change set for the stack and then apply all these changes to your Actual Stack with providing 0% risk of making failures. Use this feature so you can see the results of what you are changing and prevent any mistakes.
• Parameter Passing: CloudFormation templates can receive parameters, which means you to parameterization (allowing users to modify configuration of the resource at deployment time without changing template).
• Resource Dependencies: If a resource is dependent on another for its creation or deletion, CloudFormation takes care of that requirement and ensures the resources are created/deleted in order.
• Native AWS Services: No other tools have native integrations with as many services on the platform including instance types, database instances and S3 bucket provisioning.

Advantages of CloudFormation for Automation Resourcing

• Consistency and Reproducibility — With CloudFormation templates, you can ensure every time you deploy it’s exactly same one any new enviornment. It minimizes the possibility of both configuration drift and human error.
• Version Control: Utilizing version control system(Git), cloud formation templates can agree changes, revert configurations or terms as well effectively visible to team members
• Speed and Efficiency: By automating resource management, developers can deploy quickly while IT operations teams save time away from manual provisioning.
• Cost Optimization: CloudFormation allows resources to be created and destroyed on demand making for efficient resource utilization which can help save costs.
• CloudFormation templates are used as documentation: Since everything your infrastructure requires is a part of the CF template, it means that changes in requirements can be seen from simply looking at code.

How to Get Started with AWS CloudFormation

In order to be able to access the goodies that AWS CloudFormation can give us using command line tools, do as follows.

Step 1 : Defining your infrastructure with a CloudFormation template is the first step.

You simply write a CloudFormation template that describes the AWS resources you want, and CFN can create them all. This type of thing, to implement using CloudFormation looks like this as a very simple example in the form of YAML that creates an S3 bucket and EC2 instance

AWSTemplateFormatVersion: '2010-09-09'
Description: Simple CloudFormation Template to create an S3 bucket and an EC2 instance

Parameters:
InstanceType:
Description: EC2 instance type
Type: String
Default: t2.micro
AllowedValues:
- t2.micro
- t2.small
- t2.medium
ConstraintDescription: Must be a valid EC2 instance type.

Resources:
MyS3Bucket:
Type: AWS::S3::Bucket
Properties:
BucketName: my-unique-bucket-name

MyEC2Instance:
Type: AWS::EC2::Instance
Properties:
InstanceType: !Ref InstanceType
ImageId: ami-0abcdef1234567890 # Use a valid AMI ID
KeyName: my-key-pair
SecurityGroupIds:
- !Ref MySecurityGroup

MySecurityGroup:
Type: AWS::EC2::SecurityGroup
Properties:
GroupDescription: Enable SSH access
VpcId: vpc-0abcdef1234567890 # Use a valid VPC ID
SecurityGroupIngress:
- IpProtocol: tcp
FromPort: '22'
ToPort: '22'
CidrIp: 0.0.0.0/0

Step 2: Create a stack based on the template

After you have your template, create a stack with the AWS Management Console, CloudFormation API (through an SDK), or AWS CLI.  To create a stack with the AWS CLI,

aws cloudformation create-stack --stack-name MyStack --template-body file://my-template.yaml --parameters ParameterKey=InstanceType,ParameterValue=t2.micro

Step 3: Observe and Operate Your Stack.

After a stack is created, you can follow its status in the AWS Management Console and use various CLI commands. For any failures that happen during the deployment, CloudFormation offers well defined events and logs to identify issues.

You can update or delete your stack as well. Use the following to update a stack with an updated template.

aws cloudformation update-stack --stack-name MyStack --template-body file://my-template.yaml

And to delete the stack:

aws cloudformation delete-stack --stack-name MyStack

AWS CloudFormation Best Practices

• Modular Templates — These features enable you to split your templates into smaller, modular components (nested stacks). This in turn makes it easier to manage more complex environments and increases reusability.
• Leverage parameters for template flexibility.Use Parameters and Mappings Use mappings to have configuration defined for specific environments; dev, test or production.
• Version control your templates: Store CloudFormation templates in version control and manage the changes, deployments & collaboration more effectively.
• Outputs: Output any key resource identifiers (e.g. instance IDs or public IP addresses) that you will need to keep in mind when using your template
• Keep an Eye on Costs: Keep checking your costs for CloudFormation stacks using AWS Cost Explorer, and adjust the resources as needed so that you get most bangs for your bucks every month.
• Apply Change Sets: Preview your changes using change sets before applying them to a stack It is to prevent accidental changes, or deletion of resources.

Conclusion

One of the best ways to automate resource management on AWS is using CloudFormation. Implementing Infrastructure as Code principles can provide organizations with repeatability speed, efficiency of execution across their AWS deployments. Whether you are defining resources with templates or managing stacks, CloudFormation takes the hassle out of mining AWS for creating and controlling cloud resources. If you follow best practices and include CloudFormation in all your DevOps workflows, it will enable you to maintain a high standard of cloud infrastructure automation while bringing more value to your customers.