AWS CloudFormation streamlines deployment troubleshooting with AWS CloudTrail integration

Posted on: May 20, 2024

AWS CloudFormation enhances the troubleshooting experience for stack operations with a new AWS CloudTrail deep-link integration. This feature enables quicker resolution of stack provisioning errors. It directly links stack operation events in the CloudFormation Console to relevant CloudTrail events. These links provide detailed visibility into the errors, thus speeding up the dev-test cycle for developers.

When you create, update, or delete a stack, your operation can encounter provisioning errors, such as missing required parameters for an EC2 instance or inadequate permissions. Previously, troubleshooting a stack provisioning error in the CloudFormation Console was a multi-step process. It involved opening the CloudFormation stack events tab, clicking 'Detect Root Cause' to highlight the likely root cause of the error, and then going to the AWS CloudTrail events dashboard. There, you had to manually set filters, such as the timestamp period, to find the detailed history of the stack provisioning API events. Now, clicking 'Detect Root Cause' highlights the likely root cause of a stack provisioning error and provides a pre-configured AWS CloudTrail deep-link to API events generated by your stack operation. This provides you with additional context to diagnose and resolve errors and and eliminates multiple manual steps from the troubleshooting process.

To get started, open the CloudFormation Console and navigate to the stack events tab for a provisioned stack. This feature is available in AWS Regions where AWS CloudFormation and AWS CloudTrail are available. Refer to the AWS Region table for details. Visit our user guide to learn more about this feature.