Welcome - AWS CloudFormation

Welcome

AWS CloudFormation allows you to create and manage AWS infrastructure deployments predictably and repeatedly. You can use AWS CloudFormation to leverage AWS products, such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, Amazon Elastic Block Store, Amazon Simple Notification Service, Elastic Load Balancing, and Auto Scaling to build highly reliable, highly scalable, cost-effective applications without creating or configuring the underlying AWS infrastructure.

With AWS CloudFormation, you declare all your resources and dependencies in a template file. The template defines a collection of resources as a single unit called a stack. AWS CloudFormation creates and deletes all member resources of the stack together and manages all dependencies between the resources for you.

For more information about AWS CloudFormation, see the AWS CloudFormation product page.

AWS CloudFormation makes use of other AWS products. If you need additional technical information about a specific AWS product, you can find the product's technical documentation at docs.aws.amazon.com.

Stack actions

When you use AWS CloudFormation, you manage related resources as a single unit called a stack. You create, update, and delete a collection of resources by creating, updating, and deleting stacks. All the resources in a stack are defined by the stack's template.

CancelUpdateStack | ContinueUpdateRollback | CreateStack | DeleteStack | DescribeStacks | ListStacks | UpdateStack

Stack events: DescribeStackEvents

Stack resources: DescribeStackResource | DescribeStackResources | ListStackResources

Stack drift: DescribeStackDriftDetectionStatus | DescribeStackResourceDrifts | DetectStackDrift | DetectStackResourceDrift

Stack operations: ListExports | ListImports | UpdateTerminationProtection

Stack policies: GetStackPolicy | SetStackPolicy

Templates: EstimateTemplateCost | GetTemplate | GetTemplateSummary | ValidateTemplate

Change set actions

If you need to make changes to the running resources in a stack, you update the stack. Before making changes to your resources, you can generate a change set, which is summary of your proposed changes. Change sets allow you to see how your changes might impact your running resources, especially for critical resources, before implementing them.

CreateChangeSet | DeleteChangeSet | DescribeChangeSet | ExecuteChangeSet | ListChangeSets

Stack sets actions

AWS CloudFormation StackSets lets you create a collection, or stack set, of stacks that can automatically and safely provision a common set of AWS resources across multiple AWS accounts and multiple AWS Regions from a single AWS CloudFormation template. When you create a stack set, AWS CloudFormation provisions a stack in each of the specified accounts and AWS Regions by using the supplied AWS CloudFormation template and parameters. Stack sets let you manage a common set of AWS resources in a selection of accounts and AWS Regions in a single operation.

CreateStackSet | DeleteStackSet | DescribeStackSet | ListStackSets | UpdateStackSet

Stack instances: CreateStackInstances | DeleteStackInstances | DescribeStackInstance | ListStackInstances

Stack set operations: DescribeStackSetOperation | ListStackSetOperations | ListStackSetOperationResults | StopStackSetOperation

Extension management actions

The AWS CloudFormation registry enables you to manage the extensions, both private and public, that are available for use in your account.

ActivateType | DeactivateType | DescribeType | ListTypes

Registration: DescribeTypeRegistration | DeregisterType | ListTypeRegistrations | RegisterType

Configuration: BatchDescribeTypeConfigurations | SetTypeConfiguration

Versioning: ListTypeVersions | SetTypeDefaultVersion

Extension publication actions

Use the AWS CloudFormation operation to develop and publish your own public third-party extensions.

For more information, see Publishing extensions to make them available for public use in the CFN-CLI User Guide for Extension Development.

PublishType | TestType

Publishers: DescribePublisher | RegisterPublisher

This document was last published on March 19, 2024.