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Deploying a virtual machine using AWS CloudFormation

Recently I started using Amazon AWS and quickly realized that provisioning virtual machines, security policies and other network configurations is done one by one, which is tedious and needs to be automated. I had two options: either create a custom script to provision every single service or learn how to use CloudFormation.

CloudFormation is a provisioning tool for AWS resources that requires a YAML/JSON formatted file inside which cloud infrastructure is described. This definitely seems like the better option, but being completely new to AWS the learning curve is steep and it is difficult to understand the terminology, the various components and how to combine them. Even the graphical user interface, the “CloudFormation Designer” is not that easy to use for new users.

Screenshot of the CloudFormation visual designer software. It allows to drag and drop components or modify JSON/YAML format.
Screenshot of CloudFormation Designer

What did I do? First I learned how to provision all the components manually one by one, which took more time than I would like to admit, but was essential for me to understand the components and which ones depend on another. Eventually manually provisioning resources became easier and all the different services became familiar, that allowed me to transition my set up to CloudFormation. It was a long process. Hopefully this article will allow others to use CloudFormation much sooner.