AWS CloudFormation Templates: Best Practices for Architecting Resources

Best Practices for Architecting CloudFormation Templates

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Question

You are Devops Engineer for a large organization.

The company wants to start using Cloudformation templates to start building their resources in AWS.

You are getting requirements for the templates from various departments, such as the networking, security, application etc.

What is the best way to architect these Cloudformation templates.

Answers

Explanations

Click on the arrows to vote for the correct answer

A. B. C. D.

Answer - B.

The AWS documentation mentions the following.

As your infrastructure grows, common patterns can emerge in which you declare the same components in each of your templates.

You can separate out these common components and create dedicated templates for them.

That way, you can mix and match different templates but use nested stacks to create a single, unified stack.

Nested stacks are stacks that create other stacks.

To create nested stacks, use the AWS::CloudFormation::Stackresource in your template to reference other templates.

For more information on Cloudformation best practises, please visit the below url.

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/best-practices.html

CloudFormation is an AWS service that allows you to describe and provision a set of AWS resources as code, in a structured and repeatable manner. It is an Infrastructure as Code (IAC) tool that can be used to automate the deployment of resources in AWS.

When creating CloudFormation templates, it is important to keep in mind the following best practices:

  1. Use Version Control: Store CloudFormation templates in version control, such as Git, to track changes and maintain version history.

  2. Modularize Templates: Break down the templates into smaller, reusable components, that can be combined together to create the final stack. This makes it easier to maintain and update templates.

  3. Use Parameters: Use parameters to make the templates more flexible and reusable. Parameters allow you to pass in input values when creating a stack, rather than hardcoding them in the template.

  4. Use Outputs: Use outputs to expose important information, such as resource IDs, to other parts of the stack or other stacks. This makes it easier to reference and use resources created by the stack.

  5. Use Conditions: Use conditions to control the creation of resources based on certain criteria. This allows for more flexible and dynamic templates.

  6. Use Nested Stacks: Use nested stacks to break down a larger template into smaller, more manageable pieces. This allows for easier reuse of templates and better organization of resources.

Based on the given scenario, the best way to architect CloudFormation templates would be to create separate logical templates for each department, such as networking, security, and application. These templates should be modularized and reusable, with parameters and outputs to make them flexible and customizable.

Once these templates have been created, they can be nested together to create the final stack for the organization. This allows for better organization of resources and easier maintenance of the templates.

Option C and D are not the correct answers, as Elastic Beanstalk and OpsWorks are not designed for infrastructure provisioning like CloudFormation. They are application management tools that provide an opinionated way to deploy and manage applications in AWS. While they can be used together with CloudFormation, they are not a replacement for it.