📋 Lesson Notes & Resources
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.
🟠 Medium Level – Real-Time Automation
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.
🔴 Advanced Level – Production Use Cases
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.
🎯 Real-Time Project Example
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