Managing Infrastructure with AWS CloudFormation

1. Introduction

Goal of the tutorial

The goal of this tutorial is to provide you with a detailed understanding of how to use AWS CloudFormation to model and set up Amazon Web Services resources.

What you will learn

By the end of this tutorial, you will learn how to:
* Understand AWS CloudFormation
* Create and manage AWS CloudFormation stacks
* Work with AWS CloudFormation templates
* Use AWS CloudFormation to automate the process of managing your AWS resources

Prerequisites

This is a beginner-friendly tutorial. However, some familiarity with Amazon Web Services and JSON or YAML would be beneficial.

2. Step-by-Step Guide

AWS CloudFormation provides a common language for you to describe and provision all the infrastructure resources in your cloud environment. It allows you to use a simple text file to model and provision, in an automated and secure manner, all the resources needed for your applications across all regions and accounts.

Creating a CloudFormation Stack

A stack is a collection of AWS resources that you can manage as a single unit. You create, update, and delete a collection of resources by creating, updating, and deleting stacks.

To create a stack:

1. Open the AWS CloudFormation console.
2. Choose Create stack.
3. For Choose a template, select Use a sample template.
4. Select Simple LAMP Stack, and then choose Next.
5. Specify stack details.
6. Choose Next.
7. Choose Next on the Options page.
8. On the Review page, review and confirm the settings. Be sure to check the box acknowledging that the template might create AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) resources.
9. Choose Create stack to deploy the stack.

This will create a stack with a simple LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack.

AWS CloudFormation Template

A CloudFormation template is a JSON or YAML-formatted text file. The file is an AWS CloudFormation script that describes the AWS resources required to run your application.

A basic template includes the following sections:

1. AWSTemplateFormatVersion (optional): The AWS CloudFormation template version that the template conforms to.
2. Description (optional): A text string that describes the template.
3. Metadata (optional): Objects that provide additional information about the template.
4. Parameters (optional): Values to pass to your template at runtime.
5. Mappings (optional): A mapping of keys and associated values that you can use to specify conditional parameter values.
6. Conditions (optional): Conditions that control whether certain resources are created or whether certain resource properties are assigned a value during stack creation or update.
7. Transform (optional): For serverless applications (applications without any server management), specifies the version of the AWS Serverless Application Model (SAM) to use.
8. Resources (required): Specifies the stack resources and their properties.
9. Outputs (optional): Describes the values that are returned whenever you view your stack's properties.

3. Code Examples

Let's create a simple AWS CloudFormation template in YAML that sets up an Amazon S3 bucket.

Resources:
  MyS3Bucket:
    Type: 'AWS::S3::Bucket'
    Properties:
      BucketName: my-s3-bucket

In this example:
* Resources: is the section where we declare all AWS resources that should be created.
* MyS3Bucket: is a logical ID for our S3 bucket.
* Type: 'AWS::S3::Bucket' is the type of resource we want to create.
* Properties: is the section for defining properties of the resource.
* BucketName: my-s3-bucket is a property that specifies the name of our bucket.

The expected output of this script is the creation of an S3 bucket with the name my-s3-bucket.

4. Summary

In this tutorial, we have learned about AWS CloudFormation, how to create and manage CloudFormation stacks, and how to work with CloudFormation templates. We have also seen how AWS CloudFormation can automate the process of managing your AWS resources.

You can explore more about AWS CloudFormation by looking into other resources such as AWS' own documentation, various AWS blogs, and online courses.

5. Practice Exercises

Exercise 1:

Create a CloudFormation template that sets up an EC2 instance.

Exercise 2:

Create a CloudFormation stack using the template from Exercise 1.

Exercise 3:

Update the stack created in Exercise 2 to add an S3 bucket.

Tips for further practice:

To further practice AWS CloudFormation, try creating templates for different AWS resources and using those templates to create stacks.