Cloud Computing Intermediate

What is CloudFormation?

An AWS service that provisions and manages cloud resources using declarative JSON or YAML templates.

CloudFormation templates define AWS resources (EC2, RDS, S3, Lambda, VPC, etc.) and their configurations. A template creates a "stack" — a collection of resources managed as a single unit. Changes to templates trigger stack updates with dependency-aware ordering.

Features include change sets (preview changes), rollback on failure, drift detection, nested stacks, and cross-stack references. CloudFormation is AWS-specific; Terraform provides similar functionality across multiple cloud providers.

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Related Terms

Discounted cloud compute instances that use spare capacity at significantly lower prices but can be interrupted with short notice.

A storage architecture that manages data as objects with metadata and unique identifiers, ideal for unstructured data at scale.

Lambda Function (Cloud)

An AWS serverless compute service that runs code in response to events without provisioning or managing servers.

SLA (Service Level Agreement)

A formal agreement between a service provider and customer defining guaranteed levels of service availability and performance.

Virtual Machine (VM)

A software-based emulation of a physical computer that runs its own operating system and applications.

AWS (Amazon Web Services)

The world's largest cloud computing platform, offering hundreds of services for compute, storage, networking, and more.

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