cloudformation

Best Practices

• Use Parameters with constraints for environment-specific values
• Set DeletionPolicy to Retain or Snapshot for stateful resources (RDS, S3)
• Use Conditions for multi-environment templates (dev/staging/prod)
• Leverage pseudo parameters (!Ref AWS::StackName, AWS::Region, AWS::AccountId)
• Use intrinsic functions (!Sub, !Join, !Select, !GetAtt) for dynamic values
• Export outputs for cross-stack references with !ImportValue
• Add UpdateReplacePolicy to prevent accidental data loss
• Use AWS::CloudFormation::Init for EC2 instance bootstrapping
• Tag all resources with standard metadata (Project, Environment, ManagedBy)
• Use nested stacks or StackSets for large, reusable templates
• Never hardcode account IDs, regions, or credentials
• Set appropriate timeouts with CreationPolicy and UpdatePolicy

Documentation Sources