Changing EC2 Instance in CloudFormation Stack | Easiest Upgrade Method

Upgrade EC2 Instance Type in CloudFormation Stack

Question

Your company has created a set of CloudFormation stacks.

These stacks are used to deploy various environments in their AWS account.

One of the underlying EC2 Instances needs to be changed and upgraded to a higher Instance type.

The EC2 Instance was created as part of the CloudFormation stack.

Which of the following is the easiest way to make this change?

Answers

Explanations

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A. B. C. D.

The correct answer is C - Update the current stack.

When you create a CloudFormation stack, it represents a collection of AWS resources that you can manage as a single unit. CloudFormation stacks are deployed as a set of resources that are defined in a CloudFormation template. The CloudFormation template includes all the necessary resources, such as EC2 instances, VPCs, and security groups, that are required to deploy your application or infrastructure.

Updating an EC2 Instance type that was created as part of a CloudFormation stack can be easily achieved by updating the stack. Updating a stack allows you to modify the resources in it by updating the CloudFormation template.

Here are the steps to update the EC2 Instance type in the CloudFormation stack:

  1. Make a copy of the existing CloudFormation template.
  2. Modify the copied CloudFormation template to include the updated EC2 Instance type.
  3. Upload the modified CloudFormation template to an S3 bucket or to a local file.
  4. Update the existing stack using the updated CloudFormation template.
  5. Wait for the stack update to complete.

Updating the stack will create a change set, which is a summary of the changes that will be made to the stack. You can review the changes and then execute the change set to update the stack.

Creating a new CloudFormation template (option A or B) or creating a new instance (option D) can result in additional costs and can be time-consuming. Therefore, updating the existing stack is the easiest and most efficient way to update the EC2 Instance type.