AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional: Passing Userdata to CloudFormation Template

Userdata Functions in CloudFormation Template

Prev Question Next Question

Question

You are creating a Cloudformation template in which Userdata is going to be passed to underlying EC2 Instance.

Which of the below functions is normally used to pass data to the UserData section in the Cloudformation template?

Answers

Explanations

Click on the arrows to vote for the correct answer

A. B. C. D.

Answer - A.

The AWS Documentation mentions.

The intrinsic function Fn::Base64 returns the Base64 representation of the input string.

This function is typically used to pass encoded data to Amazon EC2 instances by way of theUserData property.

For more information on the Fn::Base64 function, please visit the below URL:

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/intrinsic-function-reference-base64.html

Sure, I can explain the different functions used in CloudFormation templates to pass data to the UserData section.

The UserData section in an EC2 instance allows you to run shell commands or scripts on the instance when it starts up. You can pass this data to the UserData section in the CloudFormation template using the AWS CloudFormation intrinsic functions.

The four options provided in the question are as follows:

A. "UserData": {"Fn::Base64": { ... }} The Fn::Base64 function is used to encode the user data as base64 before passing it to the instance. This is useful when you need to pass binary data or scripts that contain non-ASCII characters.

B. "UserData": { "Fn::Ref": { ... }} The Fn::Ref function is used to pass a reference to another resource in the same CloudFormation stack as the UserData. For example, you could reference an S3 object that contains a script that you want to run on the instance.

C. "UserData": { "Fn::GetAtt": { ... }} The Fn::GetAtt function is used to retrieve the value of an attribute from another resource in the same CloudFormation stack. For example, you could get the private IP address of an EC2 instance and pass it as part of the UserData.

D. "UserData": { "Fn::FindInMap": { ... }} The Fn::FindInMap function is used to look up a value in a two-dimensional map that you define in the CloudFormation template. This is useful when you want to pass configuration data to the instance, such as database connection strings or environment variables.

In the context of passing data to the UserData section, the most commonly used function is Fn::Base64. This is because it allows you to pass any kind of data or script to the instance, without worrying about encoding or other issues. However, the other functions can also be useful depending on your specific use case.

I hope this explanation helps you understand the different functions used to pass data to the UserData section in a CloudFormation template!