AWS CloudFormation Examples

These examples accompany my AWS Community Day Instanbul 2023 talk. Optimising EC2 AutoScaling Groups in CloudFormation

Prerequisites

AWS Account
AWS Credentials with permissions to run CloudFormation, create VPCs, IAM Role, AutoScaling Groups etc.
AWS CLI tools installed
EC2 Key Pair created

Setup VPC

Checkout this github repo.

From the AWS Console, locate the name of the EC2 KeyPair you wish to use and add keep it for the Initial Setup.

Decide on a CIDR to use for the example VPC (temporary, you can delete it later). Currently support a 10.x.0.0/16 CIDR. So substitue a number for x

Initial SSM Parameters

cd example-vpc
make update-parameter NAME=/base/example/ec2-keyname   VALUE=<<Insert Key name here>>
make update-parameter NAME=/example-vpc/cidr           VALUE=<<CIDR here. e.g. 10.10.0.0/16>>
make update-parameter NAME=/example-vpc/single-nat     VALUE=true

That last parameter single-nat will create a single EC2 NAT Gateway instance. An amz2-arm64 t4g.micro instance. Set the value to false and it will create 3 instances, one for AZs a, b and c instead.

Launch VPC

Once the above parameters are set run

make create-stack

After a couple of minutes, the VPC should be created.

make show-outputs

should then list the VPC and subnet details.

Launch ASG example

From the checkout root.

cd example-vpc
make set-default-params

This will create a default set of parameters for using the example template.

Run:

make show-ssm-parameters