AWS CloudFormation Course Outline (Basic → Advanced)

🟢 Basic Level – Foundations

1. Introduction to CloudFormation – Overview of IaC, benefits, and comparison with Terraform.

2. Core Concepts – Stacks, templates, parameters, mappings, outputs.

3. First CloudFormation Stack – Creating an S3 bucket and IAM role.

4. Template Structure – Understanding sections and YAML syntax.

5. Intrinsic Functions – Using !Ref, !GetAtt, !Sub, !Join.

6. EC2 and VPC Deployment – Launch EC2 instances, create VPC, subnets, and security groups.

7. IAM and Lambda Integration – Define IAM roles, deploy Lambda, use environment variables.

8. Mappings and Conditions – Region/environment-based configurations.

9. Change Sets and Stack Updates – Safely preview and apply updates.

10. Cross-Stack References – Export and import values between stacks.

11. Nested Stacks – Splitting templates into reusable modules.

12. StackSets – Multi-account and multi-region deployments.

13. Custom Resources – Lambda-backed custom logic.

14. CI/CD Integration – Jenkins, CodePipeline, GitHub Actions.

15. Stack Policies & Rollbacks – Protect critical resources during updates.

16. Drift Detection – Detect and fix manual changes in AWS Console.

17. Dynamic References – Use SSM and Secrets Manager securely.

18. CloudFormation Guard – Template validation and compliance rules.

Deploy a full data engineering environment using one CloudFormation template:

- VPC + Subnets + EC2 + S3 + Lambda + IAM Roles

- Include parameters for dev/stage/prod environments

- Deploy via AWS CLI and demonstrate updates