Creating stacks in AWS - Try It Yourself

Creating stacks

📖 Scenario: You are working as a cloud engineer for a small company. Your team wants to automate the creation of cloud resources using AWS CloudFormation stacks. You will create a simple CloudFormation stack that provisions an Amazon S3 bucket.

🎯 Goal: Build a CloudFormation stack template step-by-step that creates an Amazon S3 bucket with a specific name.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a CloudFormation template dictionary with the required keys

Add a Parameters section to specify the bucket name

Add a Resources section to create an S3 bucket using the parameter

Add Outputs section to export the bucket name

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

CloudFormation templates automate cloud resource creation, saving time and reducing errors.

💼 Career

Cloud engineers and DevOps professionals use CloudFormation to manage infrastructure as code.

1

Create the initial CloudFormation template dictionary

Create a dictionary called template with the key AWSTemplateFormatVersion set to '2010-09-09' and an empty Resources dictionary.

AWS

# Create the initial CloudFormation template dictionary
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Start by defining a Python dictionary with the required keys for a CloudFormation template.

2

Add Parameters section for bucket name

Add a Parameters key to the template dictionary. Inside it, create a parameter called BucketName with Type set to String and Description set to 'Name of the S3 bucket'.

AWS

template = {
    'AWSTemplateFormatVersion': '2010-09-09',
    'Resources': {}
}
# Add Parameters section with BucketName parameter
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Parameters allow users to input values when creating the stack. Add the BucketName parameter inside the Parameters dictionary.

3

Add S3 bucket resource using the parameter

Add a resource called MyS3Bucket inside the Resources dictionary of template. Set its Type to AWS::S3::Bucket and its Properties to use the BucketName parameter with { 'Ref': 'BucketName' }.

AWS

template = {
    'AWSTemplateFormatVersion': '2010-09-09',
    'Parameters': {
        'BucketName': {
            'Type': 'String',
            'Description': 'Name of the S3 bucket'
        }
    },
    'Resources': {}
}
# Add MyS3Bucket resource using BucketName parameter
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Resources define the AWS services to create. Use the Ref function to refer to the parameter value.

4

Add Outputs section to export the bucket name

Add an Outputs key to the template dictionary. Inside it, create an output called BucketNameOutput with Description set to 'The name of the S3 bucket' and Value set to { 'Ref': 'MyS3Bucket' }.

AWS

template = {
    'AWSTemplateFormatVersion': '2010-09-09',
    'Parameters': {
        'BucketName': {
            'Type': 'String',
            'Description': 'Name of the S3 bucket'
        }
    },
    'Resources': {
        'MyS3Bucket': {
            'Type': 'AWS::S3::Bucket',
            'Properties': {
                'BucketName': { 'Ref': 'BucketName' }
            }
        }
    }
}
# Add Outputs section with BucketNameOutput
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Outputs allow you to see important information after stack creation. Use Ref to get the resource's name.