Announcing New AWS CloudFormation Deployment Enhancements

Posted on: Feb 20, 2013

We are excited to announce new AWS CloudFormation deployment enhancements and expanded support for EBS-Optimized instances. AWS CloudFormation makes it easy for you to provision and configure a set of related resources, including installing and configuring software on your Amazon EC2 instances.

Rolling Deployments for Auto Scaling Groups

You can now define update policies on Auto Scaling groups in CloudFormation templates. These update policies describe how instances in the Auto Scaling group are replaced or modified as part of a stack update operation. Update policies give you control over the number of instances that can be modified concurrently, the number of instances that should remain in service, and the wait time between instances to be updated. With rolling deployments, you reduce downtime when updating your application.

To learn more about update policies for Auto Scaling, see the AWS CloudFormation User Guide.

Cancel and Rollback Action for Stack Updates

AWS CloudFormation now supports the ability to cancel a stack update. Using the cancel action, you can interrupt the stack update operation and trigger a rollback. The cancel action can be used in concert with update policies to automate the cancellation and rollback of a deployment. As you apply updates to your Auto Scaling group, you can validate your deployment and decide to cancel the operation.

To learn more about the cancel action, visit the AWS CloudFormation User Guide.

EBS-Optimized Instances for Auto Scaling Groups

Starting today, you can also provision EBS-optimized instances inside Auto Scaling groups using CloudFormation templates. EBS-optimized instances provide dedicated throughput to Amazon EBS and an optimized configuration stack to provide optimal EBS I/O performance.

To learn more about how you can leverage EBS-optimized instances for Auto Scaling groups, visit the AWS CloudFormation User Guide.