Updating CloudFormation Stacks with Direct Updates and Change Sets

1 hour
  • 3 Learning Objectives

About this Hands-on Lab

In this hands-on lab, we will walk through proper ways to update CloudFormation stacks. We will first update a stack with direct updates and then use change sets to update a stack. In the process, we will create multiple change sets and view the behavior of the stack when a change set is applied.

Learning Objectives

Successfully complete this lab by achieving the following learning objectives:

Deploy a LAMP Stack Using an AWS CloudFormation Template
  • Navigate to the CloudFormation console to create the stack.
  • Upload the LAMP stack template provided with the lab and create the stack.
  • Select your VPC and two subnets in the template.

    Note: You will need to create a key pair in the EC2 console before you can deploy the template.

  • Once it is deployed, check the CloudFormation outputs for the DNS name of the load balancer.
  • Copy the URL into a browser to verify the sample site has deployed correctly.
Use an Update Stack to Scale Up
  • In the CloudFormation console, update the stack and change the instance type from t3.small to t3.medium on the Parameters page.
  • Using the load balancer URL, verify that our server comes up and the site becomes available once more.
Use a Change Set to Scale Out
  • Use a CloudFormation change set to add a second server to the template in another subnet and ensure that it is added to the load balancer.
  • View and then execute the change set.
  • Once it is finished, use the load balancer DNS name to confirm the site is up and running.

Additional Resources

Please log in to the AWS environment using the credentials provided. Make sure you are using us-east-1 (N. Virginia) as the selected region.

The lab uses two CloudFormation templates, which you can download at the lab GitHub repository.

What are Hands-on Labs

Hands-on Labs are real environments created by industry experts to help you learn. These environments help you gain knowledge and experience, practice without compromising your system, test without risk, destroy without fear, and let you learn from your mistakes. Hands-on Labs: practice your skills before delivering in the real world.

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