I&#39;m finding it hard to understand the difference between SAM template and Cloudformation template. I know that SAM template can be used to define Serverless Applications like Lambda, but how does that make it different from Cloudformation template? Is the syntax different? I can still specify the Lambda definitions in cloudformation template. So, my question is why should I care about SAM? Won&#39;t knowing about just cloud formation template be sufficient?

Difference between SAM template and Cloudformation template

An AWS CloudFormation rollback (e.g., UPDATE_ROLLBACK_IN_PROGRESS) has been in progress forever, like over an hour and a half. I want to delete the stack altogether or force stop any activity. Is this possible?

Thanks!

Can I force delete an AWS CloudFormation stack that is In Progress of Rollback

I created CloudFormation yaml template and I need to use `!GetAtt &quot;TestLambda.Arn&quot;` as part of `!Sub` function in &quot;AWS::ApiGateway::Method&quot; Integration Uri:

&lt;!-- language: lang-yaml --&gt;

    Type: &quot;AWS::ApiGateway::Method&quot;
      Properties:
        RestApiId:
          Ref: &quot;RestApi&quot;
        ResourceId:
          Ref: &quot;TestResource&quot;
        HttpMethod: &quot;GET&quot;
        AuthorizationType: &quot;NONE&quot;
        Integration:
          Type: &quot;AWS_PROXY&quot;
          IntegrationHttpMethod: &quot;POST&quot;
          Uri: !Sub &quot;arn:aws:apigateway:us-east-1:lambda:path/2015-03-31/functions/[[place where I want to use !GetAtt &quot;TestLambda.Arn&quot;]]/invocations&quot;


As result I want to get a value something like that:

    &quot;arn:aws:apigateway:us-east-1:lambda:path/2015-03-31/functions/my-endpoint-lambda/invocations&quot;

How can I use these functions together and get the desired result?

How to use Sub and GetAtt functions at the same time in CloudFormation template?

When I run CloudFormation `deploy` using a template with API Gateway resources, the first time I run it, it creates and deploys to stages. The subsequent times I run it, it updates the resources but doesn&#39;t deploy to stages.

Is that behaviour as intended?  If yes, how&#39;d I get it to deploy to stages whenever it updates?

(Terraform mentions a similar issue: https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/issues/6613)


CloudFormation doesn&#39;t deploy to API gateway stages on update

I have developed a .NET MVC application and have started playing around with AWS and deploying it via the Visual Studio Toolkit. I have successfully deployed the application using the Elastic Beanstalk option in the toolkit.

As I was going over the tutorials for deploying .NET apps to AWS with the toolkit, I noticed there are tutorials for deploying with [both Elastic Beanstalk and CloudFormation](http://aws.amazon.com/visualstudio/). What is the difference between these two? 

From what I can tell, it seems like they both essentially are doing the same thing - making it easier to deploy your application to the AWS cloud (setting up EC2 instances, load balancer, auto-scaling, etc). I have tried reading up on them both, but I can&#39;t seem to get anything other than a bunch of buzz-words that sound like the same thing to me. I even found an [FAQ](http://aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/faqs/#3) on the AWS website that is supposed to answer this exact question, yet I don&#39;t really understand.

Should I be using one or the other? Both?

What is the difference between Elastic Beanstalk and CloudFormation for a .NET project?

CloudFormation is a powerful AWS offering that allows the programmatic creation of AWS resource stacks, such as the [web tier of an application,](https://s3.amazonaws.com/cloudformation-templates-us-east-1/vpc_multiple_subnets.template) a [high performance computing cluster,](https://s3.amazonaws.com/cloudformation-templates-us-east-1/cc2-spot-cluster.template) or [an entire application stack,](https://s3.amazonaws.com/cloudformation-templates-us-east-1/Rails_Multi_AZ.template) with a single API call. It is immensely powerful. Using it is surely considered a good AWS practice, especially when it&#39;s combined with [Chef,](http://www.opscode.com/chef/) [Puppet,](http://puppetlabs.com/) or [cloud-init.](https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CloudInit) Debugging it drives me to vice.

Take a production example: The stock [mongodb cluster templates](https://mongodb-documentation.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ecosystem/tutorial/automate-deployment-with-cloudformation.html) won&#39;t work for me. I don&#39;t particularly know why. I&#39;m sure it&#39;s something simple as it almost always is. My problem isn&#39;t that I can&#39;t figure out what&#39;s wrong. It&#39;s that it takes the stack between 20 and 30 minutes to fail, and then another three or four minutes to delete, assuming it deletes the resources properly at all.

What am I missing? I know about the `--disable-rollback` flag and use it like oxygen. I learned long ago to wrap exit messages with `cfn-signal` and to throw them like ballast off a sinking ship. How can I make the template debugging process faster, or am I stuck forever noticing my mistakes half an hour after I make them?

How can I quickly and effectively debug CloudFormation templates?

When I deploy using cloudformation ```aws cloudformation deploy --region $region --stack-name ABC```

Got error: 

&gt; An error occurred (ValidationError) when calling the CreateChangeSet
&gt; operation:
&gt; Stack:arn:aws:cloudformation:stack/service/7e1d8c70-d60f-11e9-9728-0a4501e4ce4c
&gt; is in ROLLBACK_COMPLETE state and can not be updated.

Please help me !

ValidationError Stack:arn aws cloudformation stack is in ROLLBACK_COMPLETE state and can not be updated

I would like to know what are the advantages and disadvantages of using AWS OpsWorks vs AWS Beanstalk and AWS CloudFormation?

I am interested in a system that can be auto scaled to handle any high number of simultaneous web requests (From 1000 requests per minute to 10 million rpm.), including a database layer that can be auto scalable as well.

Instead of having a separate instance for each app, Ideally I would like to share some hardware resources efficiently. In the past I have used mostly an EC2 instance + RDS + Cloudfront + S3

The stack system will host some high traffic ruby on rails apps that we are migrating from Heroku, also some python/django apps and some PHP apps as well.

Thanks in advance.

AWS OpsWorks vs AWS Beanstalk vs AWS CloudFormation?

Here&#39;s (the DynamoDB part of) my Troposphere-generated JSON:

    &quot;sandbox&quot;: {
            &quot;Properties&quot;: {
                &quot;AttributeDefinitions&quot;: [
                    {
                        &quot;AttributeName&quot;: &quot;audit_id&quot;,
                        &quot;AttributeType&quot;: &quot;S&quot;
                    },
                    {
                        &quot;AttributeName&quot;: &quot;status&quot;,
                        &quot;AttributeType&quot;: &quot;S&quot;
                    },
                    {
                        &quot;AttributeName&quot;: &quot;filename&quot;,
                        &quot;AttributeType&quot;: &quot;S&quot;
                    },
                    {
                        &quot;AttributeName&quot;: &quot;file_detected_dt&quot;,
                        &quot;AttributeType&quot;: &quot;S&quot;
                    },
                    {
                        &quot;AttributeName&quot;: &quot;time_taken&quot;,
                        &quot;AttributeType&quot;: &quot;N&quot;
                    },
                    {
                        &quot;AttributeName&quot;: &quot;number_rows_processed_file&quot;,
                        &quot;AttributeType&quot;: &quot;N&quot;
                    },
                    {
                        &quot;AttributeName&quot;: &quot;number_rows_created_db&quot;,
                        &quot;AttributeType&quot;: &quot;N&quot;
                    },
                    {
                        &quot;AttributeName&quot;: &quot;info_messages&quot;,
                        &quot;AttributeType&quot;: &quot;S&quot;
                    }
                ],
                &quot;KeySchema&quot;: [
                    {
                        &quot;AttributeName&quot;: &quot;audit_id&quot;,
                        &quot;KeyType&quot;: &quot;HASH&quot;
                    }
                ],
                &quot;ProvisionedThroughput&quot;: {
                    &quot;ReadCapacityUnits&quot;: {
                        &quot;Ref&quot;: &quot;ReadCapacityUnits&quot;
                    },
                    &quot;WriteCapacityUnits&quot;: {
                        &quot;Ref&quot;: &quot;WriteCapacityUnits&quot;
                    }
                }
            },
            &quot;Type&quot;: &quot;AWS::DynamoDB::Table&quot;
        }

CloudFormation gives me this error on trying to spin up the VPC:  `Property AttributeDefinitions is inconsistent with the KeySchema of the table and the secondary indexes`.

But ... is it? I&#39;m specifying `audit_id` as a lone key, and it definitely exists within the AttributeDefinitions list. I&#39;m very new to CF (and Dynamo, for that matter) so I may well be missing something extremely obvious, but it&#39;s not apparent to me at the moment.

I&#39;ve googled around and only really found one mention of this error, and it was more to do with a layer between developer and CF, rather than CF itself.

Can anyone point out what&#39;s wrong with my template?

CloudFormation insists my DynamoDB creation JSON is invalid .. but I can&#39;t see how

I&#39;m trying out [Serverless][1] to create AWS Lambdas and while creating a project using the command `serverless project create` I&#39;m getting the following error.

    AccessDenied: User: arn:aws:iam::XXXXXXXXX:user/XXXXXXXXX is not authorized to perform: cloudformation:CreateStack on resource: arn:aws:cloudformation:us-east-1:XXXXXXXXX:stack/XXXXXXXXX-development-r/*

I have created a user and granted the following permissions to the user. 

 1. AWSLambdaFullAccess
 2. AmazonS3FullAccess
 3. CloudFrontFullAccess
 4. AWSCloudFormationReadOnlyAccess ( There was no `AWSCloudFormationFullAccess` to grant )

How can I proceed? What else permissions I have to grant? 

  [1]: http://serverless.com

User is not authorized to perform: cloudformation:CreateStack

When creating a stack with CloudFormation, I get this error:

&gt; Stack update error: Requires capabilities : [CAPABILITY_IAM]

I can&#39;t find a template for adding `CAPABILITIES_IAM` to the CloudFormation configuration.

What are the options for resolving `CAPABILITIES_IAM` errors?

AWS CloudFormation Stack update error: Requires capabilities : [CAPABILITY_IAM]

I am using the below to get the [stack information][1] I want via AWS Cli:

    aws cloudformation --region ap-southeast-2 describe-stacks --stack-name mystack

It&#39;s returning result OK:

    {
        &quot;Stacks&quot;: [
            {
                &quot;StackId&quot;: &quot;arn:aws:mystackid&quot;, 
                &quot;LastUpdatedTime&quot;: &quot;2017-01-13T04:59:17.472Z&quot;, 
                &quot;Tags&quot;: [], 
                &quot;Outputs&quot;: [
                    {
                        &quot;OutputKey&quot;: &quot;Ec2Sg&quot;, 
                        &quot;OutputValue&quot;: &quot;sg-97e13dff&quot;
                    }, 
                    {
                        &quot;OutputKey&quot;: &quot;DbUrl&quot;, 
                        &quot;OutputValue&quot;: &quot;myUrl&quot;
                    }
                ], 
                &quot;CreationTime&quot;: &quot;2017-01-13T03:27:18.893Z&quot;, 
                &quot;StackName&quot;: &quot;mystack&quot;, 
                &quot;NotificationARNs&quot;: [], 
                &quot;StackStatus&quot;: &quot;UPDATE_ROLLBACK_COMPLETE&quot;, 
                &quot;DisableRollback&quot;: false
            }
        ]
    }

But I do not know how to return only the value of OutputValue which is myUrl

As I do not need the rest, just myUrl.

Is that possible via aws cloudformation describe-stacks?

**Edit**

I just realize I can use --[query][2]:

    --query &quot;Stacks[0].Outputs[1].OutputValue&quot;

will get exactly what I want but I would like to use DbUrl else if the number of Outputs changes, my result will be unexpected.


  [1]: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/cloudformation/describe-stacks.html
  [2]: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/controlling-output.html

Getting Outputs from aws cloudformation describe-stacks

I have following template that i am using in cloudformation UI to create dynamoDB table. I want to create a table with *PrimaryKey* as *ID* and *sortKey* as *Value*


    {
      &quot;AWSTemplateFormatVersion&quot; : &quot;2010-09-09&quot;,
     
      &quot;Description&quot; : &quot;DB Description&quot;,
     
      &quot;Resources&quot; : {
        &quot;TableName&quot; : {
          &quot;Type&quot; : &quot;AWS::DynamoDB::Table&quot;,
          &quot;Properties&quot; : {
            &quot;AttributeDefinitions&quot;: [ { 
              &quot;AttributeName&quot; : &quot;ID&quot;,
              &quot;AttributeType&quot; : &quot;S&quot;
            }, { 
              &quot;AttributeName&quot; : &quot;Value&quot;,
              &quot;AttributeType&quot; : &quot;S&quot;
            } ],
            &quot;KeySchema&quot;: [
              { 
                &quot;AttributeName&quot;: &quot;ID&quot;, 
                &quot;KeyType&quot;: &quot;HASH&quot;
              }
            ]                
          },
          &quot;TableName&quot;: &quot;TableName&quot;
        }
      }
    }

On the CF UI, I click on new stack, point to the `template` file from my local computer, give stack a name and click next. After sometime, I get error that says **Property AttributeDefinitions is inconsistent with the KeySchema of the table and the secondary indexes**

PropertyDefinition inconsistent

I am trying to validate an AWS example CloudFormation template using a command like:

```
▶ aws cloudformation validate-template --template-body template.yml
```

This leads to the following error message:

```
An error occurred (ValidationError) when calling the ValidateTemplate operation:
  Template format error: unsupported structure. 
```

I tried this on many templates, including example templates from the AWS documentation. So I know the templates are okay.

What am I doing wrong?

Template format error: unsupported structure seen in AWS CloudFormation

I&#39;m trying to specify a boolean parameter in a CloudFormation template so I can conditionally create resources based on a parameter passed in.

Looking at the documentation [here][1] and [here][2] it would appear there is a discernible lack of a boolean data type.

  [1]: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/devops/using-the-new-cloudformation-parameter-types/
  [2]: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/parameters-section-structure.html

What is best practice for specifying a boolean? possibly `Number` with 0 or 1 or `String` with `AllowedValues` &#39;true&#39; and &#39;false&#39;?

AWS: How to specify a boolean parameter in a CloudFormation template

When I try to deploy my AWS SAM YAML file, it fails saying the !Ref is an unknown tag. 

[![enter image description here][1]][1]

Any ideas to get around this?

    AWSTemplateFormatVersion: &#39;2010-09-09&#39;
    Transform: AWS::Serverless-2016-10-31
    
    Resources:
      MySimpleFunction:
        Type: AWS::Serverless::Function
        Properties:
          Handler: index.handler
          Runtime: nodejs4.3
          CodeUri: s3://&lt;bucket&gt;/MyCode.zip
          Events:
            MyUploadEvent:
              Type: S3
              Properties:
                Id: !Ref Bucket
                Events: Create
      Bucket:
        Type: AWS::S3::Bucket


  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Bou7N.png

AWS SAM YAML template - Unknown Tag !Ref

Is there a way to specify the CloudWatch log group that an AWS lambda logs to?  It seems to be generated directly from the lambda name; however, it would be especially convenient to, for example, aggregate multiple lambdas to a single log group.  We are especially interested in specifying the log group when the lambda is created by a CloudFormation template.

Specify log group for an AWS lambda?

I&#39;m trying to create a new version of a Lambda function using CloudFormation.

I want to have multiple versions of the same Lambda function so that I can (a) point aliases at different versions - like DEV and PROD - and (b) be able to roll back to an earlier version

This is the definition of my Lambda version:

```yaml
LambdaVersion:
  Type: AWS::Lambda::Version
  Properties:
    FunctionName:
      Ref: LambdaFunction
```

A version gets created when running &quot;aws cloudformation create-stack&quot; but the subsequent &quot;aws cloudformation update-stack&quot; commands don&#39;t do anything. There are no new Lambda versions created.

I&#39;m trying to get a new version of the Lambda function created after I upload new zip file to S3 and then run &quot;update-stack&quot;. Can I do it with CloudFormation? Is AWS::Lambda::Version really broken (as mentioned here https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/issues/6067#issuecomment-211708071) or am I just not getting something?

**Update 1/11/17**
Official reply from Amazon support:
&quot;...for any new version to be published you need to define an addition *(sic)* AWS::Lambda::Version resource...&quot;

AWS CloudFormation/Lambda team, if you&#39;re reading this - this is unacceptable. Fix it.



How to create a new version of a Lambda function using CloudFormation?

I am creating an RDS instance using CloudFormation using this:

&lt;!-- language-all: lang-json --&gt;

&lt;pre&gt;
&quot;Resources&quot;: {
        &quot;myDB&quot;: {
            &quot;Type&quot;: &quot;AWS::RDS::DBInstance&quot;,
            &quot;Properties&quot;: {
                &quot;AllocatedStorage&quot;: &quot;5&quot;,
                &quot;DBInstanceClass&quot;: &quot;db.m1.small&quot;,
                &quot;Engine&quot;: &quot;MySQL&quot;,
                &quot;EngineVersion&quot;: &quot;5.5&quot;,
                &quot;DBName&quot;: &quot;mydb&quot;,
                &quot;MasterUsername&quot;: {
                    &quot;Ref&quot;: &quot;DBUser&quot;
                },
                &quot;MasterUserPassword&quot;: {
                    &quot;Ref&quot;: &quot;DBPassword&quot;
                },
                &quot;DBParameterGroupName&quot;: {
                    &quot;Ref&quot;: &quot;myRDSParamGroup&quot;
                }
            }
        }
&lt;/pre&gt;

and it all works.  But I need to run initial SQL on the DB when its created, to setup my apps schema.  My current approach is to have the app self migrating, but I&#39;d like to do it in the CloudFormation definition.  Is this possible?

Is there a way to run initial SQL when creating an RDS database instance using CloudFormation?

I have a template that works and generates a stack but I cannot find a property to set or something else that allows me to give a Name to the EC2 Instance I have created. When it is generated the Name is blank.

All Amazon Cloudformation Solutions on Gang of Coders

Total of 20 Amazon Cloudformation Solutions