AWS CloudFormation gives developers and systems administrators an easy way to create a collection of related AWS resources and provision them in an orderly and predictable fashion. The AWS CloudFormation samples package contains a collection of templates that illustrate various usage cases. Stacks can be created from the templates via the AWS Management Console, the AWS CLI, the AWS CloudFormation APIs, or the AWS Toolkits. You can use the templates as-is or you can use them as a starting point for creating your own templates. All the sample templates can be downloaded here.

AWS CloudFormation is available in all AWS regions. For more details click here.

Template URL Description Launch in US West (Oregon) Region
Windows_Single_Server_SharePoint_Foundation.template SharePoint® Foundation 2010 running on Microsoft Windows Server® 2008 R2 Launch Stack
Windows_Single_Server_Active_Directory.template Create a single server installation of Active Directory running on Microsoft Windows Server® 2008 R2. Launch Stack
Windows_Roles_And_Features.template Create a single server specifying server roles running on Microsoft Windows Server® 2008 R2. Launch Stack

* Microsoft, Windows Server, and SharePoint are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.

The following sample templates show you how to provision existing open source application stack. Each of the samples shows how to deploy and install the application at launch time using the AWS CloudFormation application bootstrap support described here.

Description
Template URL
Launch in US West (Oregon) Region
Drupal is an open source content management platform powering millions of websites and applications. For more details click here. Single EC2 Instance with local MySQL database Launch Stack
Single EC2 Instance web server with Amazon RDS database instance Launch Stack
Highly Available Web Server with Multi-AZ Amazon RDS database instance and using S3 for storing file content Launch Stack
Gollum is a simple wiki system built on top of Git that powers GitHub Wikis. For more details click here. Single EC2 Instance with data stored on ephemeral drive Launch Stack
Single EC2 Instance with data stored on an EBS volume Launch Stack
Insoshi is an open source social networking platform in Ruby on Rails. For more details click here. Single EC2 Instance with local MySQL database Launch Stack
Single EC2 Instance web server with Amazon RDS database instance Launch Stack
  Highly Available Web Server with Multi-AZ Amazon RDS database instance and files stored on S3 Launch Stack
Joomla! is a free, open-source content management system (CMS) and application framework. For more details click here. Single EC2 Instance with local MySQL database Launch Stack
  Single EC2 Instance web server with Amazon RDS database instance Launch Stack
  Highly Available Web Server with Multi-AZ Amazon RDS Instance Launch Stack
Redmine is a flexible project management web application which includes a gantt chart, calendar, wiki, forums, multiple roles, and email notification. For more details click here. Single EC2 Instance with local MySQL database Launch Stack
  Single EC2 Instance web server with Amazon RDS database instance Launch Stack
  Highly Available Web Server with Multi-AZ Amazon RDS database instance Launch Stack
Tracks is a web-based application to help you implement David Allen's Getting Things Done™ methodology. For more details click here. Single EC2 Instance with local MySQL Launch Stack
  Single EC2 Instance web server with Amazon RDS database instance Launch Stack
  Highly Available Web Server with Multi-AZ Amazon RDS Instance Launch Stack
WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog. For more details click here. Single EC2 Instance with local MySQL database Launch Stack
  Single EC2 Instance web server with Amazon RDS database instance Launch Stack
  Highly Available Web Server with Multi-AZ Amazon RDS Instance Launch Stack

The following sample templates show you how to provision application frameworks by setting up Hello World applications:

The following sample templates illustrate how to use different resources or template features:

Template URL Description Launch in US West (Oregon) Region
auto_scaling_with_instance_profile.template Create an Auto Scaling group with an an associated instance profile. Launch Stack
AutoScalingKeepAtNSample.template An example of using Auto Scaling groups to manage a set of EC2 instances. Launch Stack
AutoScalingMultiAZSample.template An example of using Load Balanced, Auto Scaling groups spanning multiple EC2 availability zones. This template has been updated to use Auto Scaling Policies. Launch Stack
AutoScalingMultiAZWithNotifications.template An example of using Load Balanced Auto Scaling groups spanning multiple EC2 availability zones. This template uses Auto Scaling Policies and configures Auto Scaling notifications so that you can get emails when scaling events occur. Launch Stack
AutoScalingRollingUpdates.template Example of creating an Auto Scaling group with a rolling upgrade policy. Launch Stack
AutoScalingScheduledAction.template Example of creating an Auto Scaling group with scheduled scaling actions. Launch Stack
bees-with-machineguns.template Create a load balancer, a Bees With Machine Guns Controller, and spot instances behind the load balancer; fire up bwmg and trigger attack; store logs on S3 then shutdown (if enabled). Launch Stack
CloudFront_S3.template An example of using a CloudFront distribution with an S3 origin. Launch Stack
CloudFront_MultiOrigin.template Example of creating and using a CloudFront Multi-Origin Distribution. Launch Stack
DynamoDB_Table.template Example of creating and using a DynamoDB table. Launch Stack
DynamoDBSI.template Example of creating a DynamoDB table with local and global secondary indexes. Launch Stack
EC2WithEBSPIOPs.template Create an Amazon EC2 instance and an EBS volume with Provisioned IOPs. Launch Stack
ec2_instance_with_instance_profile.template Create an EC2 instance with an associated instance profile. Launch Stack
EC2ChooseAMI.template An example of using Mappings to select an AMI based on region and instance type. Launch Stack
EC2InstanceSample.template Simple EC2 instance example. Launch Stack
EC2InstanceWithSecurityGroupSample.template Simple EC2 instance with a security group. Launch Stack
EC2WebSiteSample.template Simple EC2-based website. Launch Stack
EC2WithEBSSample.template Sample of attaching an EBS volume to an EC2 instance. Launch Stack
EC2WithMetadata.template Example of using resource metadata with an EC2 instance resource. Launch Stack
EC2_Untargeted_Launch_with_EBS_Volume.template Untargeted launch of an EC2 instance with an attached EBS volume. Launch Stack
EC2_Instance_With_Block_Device_Mapping.template Example of creating an EC2 instance with Block Device Mappings. Launch Stack
EC2_Instance_With_Ephemeral_Drives.template Example of creating an EC2 instance using Ephemeral storage devices. Launch Stack
EC2InstanceWithEBSVolumeConditionalIOPs.template Example of creating an EC2 instance with optional volume and optional PIOPs. Launch Stack
EBS_Snapshot_On_Delete.template Sample of attaching an EBS volume to an EC2 instance with the snapshot deletion policy. This will cause a snapshot of the EBS volume to be taken prior to the EBS volume resource being deleted. Launch Stack
EIP_With_Association.template Associate an EC2 Instance with a pre-existing EIP. Launch Stack
ElasticBeanstalk_Nodejs_Sample.template Launch an AWS Elastic Beanstalk Node.js sample application. Launch Stack
Elastic-Beanstalk-in-VPC.template Launch an AWS Elastic Beanstalk sample application in a VPC. The template creates a VPC and launches an Elastic Beanstalk application in it. Launch Stack
ElasticBeanstalk_Ruby_Sample.template Launch an AWS Elastic Beanstalk Ruby sample application. Launch Stack
ElasticBeanstalk_Python_Sample.template Launch an AWS Elastic Beanstalk Python sample application. Launch Stack
ElasticBeanstalkSample.template Startup the AWS Elastic Beanstalk Sample Application Launch Stack
ElasticBeanstalk_Simple.template Sample AWS Beanstalk application connected to an Amazon RDS database instance Launch Stack
ElasticBeanstalk_PHP_Sample.template Launch an AWS Elastic Beanstalk PHP sample application. Launch Stack
multi-tier-vpc.template Create a VPC that is configured to allow Elastic Beanstalk applications to launch into. Launch Stack
ElastiCache.template Example of creating an ElastiCache Cache Cluster with Memcached engine - The template also deploys a sample PHP application that connects to the Cache Cluster. Launch Stack
ElastiCache_Redis.template Example of creating an ElastiCache Cache Cluster with Redis engine - The template also deploys a sample PHP application that connects to the Cache Cluster. Launch Stack
VPC_ElastiCache_Cluster.template Example of creating an ElastiCache Cache Cluster inside a VPC - The template also deploys a sample PHP application that connects to the Cache Cluster. Launch Stack
ELBSample.template Elastic Load Balancer with a health check Launch Stack
ELBStickinessSample.template Elastic Load Balancer example configured with cookie-based stickiness. Launch Stack
ELBWithLockedDownEC2Instances.template Elastic Load Balancer with instances that are locked down to only receive traffic from the load balancer. Launch Stack
ELBWithLockedDownAutoScaledInstances.template Elastic Load Balancer with and Auto Scaling group that is locked down to only receive traffic from the load balancer. Launch Stack
ELBGDAL.template Elastic Load Balancer with Connection Draining and Access Logs Launch Stack
ELBZoneApex.template Map an Elastic Load Balancer to a DNS Zone apex. Launch Stack
IAM_Users_Groups_and_Policies.template Example of creating IAM users, groups and policies. Launch Stack
IAM_Policies_for_S3.template Example of using IAM policies to configure access to an S3 bucket. Launch Stack
IAM_Policies_SNS_Publish_To_SQS.template Example of using IAM policies to configure an SNS topic to publish to an SQS queue. Launch Stack
Mutually_Referencing_EC2_Security_Groups.template Example of creating EC2 security groups that mutually reference each other. Launch Stack
OpsWorks.template Example showing how to create a VPC environment for AWS OpsWorks Launch Stack
OpsWorksVPCELB.template Example provisioning a load balanced OpsWorks application inside a VPC Launch Stack
Parameter_Validate.template.template Parameter validation examples. Launch Stack
RDS_PIOPS.template Create an RDS database with Provisioned IOPs. Launch Stack
RDS_with_DBParameterGroup.template Create an RDS database with DBParameter group settings. Launch Stack
RDS_Version.template Example of creating an Amazon Relational Database Service database instance with a specific MySQL version. Launch Stack
RDS_MySQL_55.template Instantiate an RDS MySQL V5.5 database instance with best practice alarm configuration. Launch Stack
RDS_MySQL_With_Read_Replica.template Example with an RDS Read Replica which allows scaling beyond the capacity of the primary database instance for read-heavy workloads. Launch Stack
RDSDatabaseWithOptionalReadReplica.template Example of an RDS instance with an optinoal RDS Read Replica. Launch Stack
RDS_VPC.template Example of creating an Amazon RDS database instance in a VPC using VPC security groups. Launch Stack
RDS_Snapshot_On_Delete.template Example of creating an Amazon Relational Database Service database instance with the snapshot deletion policy. This will cause a snapshot of the Amazon RDS database instance to be created before the database resource is deleted. Launch Stack
RDS_Oracle.template Instantiate an RDS Oracle database instance. Launch Stack
Redshift.template Provision a Redshift cluster. Launch Stack
RedshiftClusterInVpc.template Provision a VPC and a Redshift cluster inside the VPC. Launch Stack
Route53_A.template Example of creating an Amazon Route 53 DNS A record associated with an EC2 instance. Launch Stack
Route53_CNAME.template Example of creating an Amazon Route 53 DNS CNAME record. Launch Stack
Route53_RoundRobin.template Example of using Route 53 weighted round robin (WRR) DNS records. Launch Stack
S3_Bucket.template Example of creating a publicly accessible S3 bucket. Launch Stack
S3_Bucket_With_Tags.template Example of creating a publicly accessible S3 bucket. Launch Stack
S3_Website_Bucket_With_Retain_On_Delete.template Example of creating an S3 bucket with the retain deletion policy to keep the bucket after the stack is deleted. Launch Stack
S3_With_CloudFront_Distribution.template Example of creating a website using an S3, website-enabled bucket, distributed globally via CloudFront. Launch Stack
S3_Website_With_CloudFront_Distribution.template Example of creating a website using an S3, website-enabled bucket, distributed globally via CloudFront. Launch Stack
S3Bucket_Auth_1.templateS3Bucket_Auth_2.template, S3Bucket_Lockdown_to_IAM_User.template, S3Bucket_SourceAuth.template Examples showing how to use cfn-init to download files and sources from an authenticated (non-public) location.  
SQS.template Example of creating an Amazon SQS queue. Launch Stack
SQSWithQueueName.template Example of creating an Amazon SQS queue with a custom name. Launch Stack
SNSToSQS.template Create an SNS topic that can send messages to two SQS queues with appropriate permissions for one IAM user to publish to the topic and another to read messages from the queues. Launch Stack
SQS_With_CloudWatch_Alarms.template Example of using Amazon CloudWatch alarms with Amazon SQS metrics. Launch Stack
WaitObject.template Example of using a WaitCondition resource to block stack creation until an external event occurs. Launch Stack
multi-tier-web-app-in-vpc.template Create a multi-tier web application in a VPC with multiple subnets. The first subnet is public and contains and internet facing load balancer, a NAT device for internet access from the private subnet and a bastion host to allow SSH access to the hosts in the private subnet. The second subnet is private and contains a Frontend fleet of EC2 instances, an internal load balancer and a Backend fleet of EC2 instances. Launch Stack
vpc_single_instance_in_subnet.template Create a VPC, subnet, internet gateway, routing table and network ACL and add an EC2 instance running a sample PHP application with an Elastic IP address and a security group. Launch Stack
vpc_multiple_subnets.template Create a VPC with multiple subnets. The first subnet is public and contains the load balancer, the second subnet is private and contains an EC2 instance behind the load balancer. Launch Stack
VPC_Instance_With_Association.template Example of launching and Amazon EC2 instance in a pre-existing Amazon Virtual Private Cloud and associating it with an existing VPC-based Elastic IP Address. Launch Stack
VPC_EC2_Instance_with_EIP_and_Security_Group.template Launch an Amazon EC2 instance and an associated Elastic IP address in an existing VPC. Launch Stack
VPC_EC2_Instance_With_Multiple_Dynamic_IPAddresses.template Example of launching an EC2 instance in an existing VPC with multiple IP addresses using DHCP Launch Stack
VPC_EC2_Instance_With_Multiple_Static_IPAddresses.template Example of launching an EC2 instance in an existing VPC with multiple static IP addresses Launch Stack
VPC_With_PublicIPs_And_DNS.template Example of launching an EC2 instance with a Public IP in a new VPC and with DNS resolution on the VPC Launch Stack
VPC_AutoScaling_and_ElasticLoadBalancer.template Launch an Auto Scaling Group and an associated Elastic Load Balancer in an existing VPC. Launch Stack
VPC_AutoScaling_With_Public_IPs.template Launch an Auto Scaling Group and an associated Elastic Load Balancer in a VPC where instances can directly access the Internet using Public IPs. Launch Stack
VPC_RDS_DB_Instance.template Launch an Amazon RDS Database instance in an existing VPC. Launch Stack
VPC_With_VPN_Connection.template Example of creating a VPC with static routing to an existing VPN Launch Stack
VPC_WordPress_Single_Instance_With_RDS.template Launch a single instance WordPress installation using an Amazon RDS database instance for storage in an existing VPC. Launch Stack
worker-role.template Create a multi-az, Auto Scaled worker that pulls command messages from a queue and execs the command. This template uses spot instances as the workers. Launch Stack

AWS CloudFromation provides helper scripts to make it easy for you to bootstrap applications in the cloud. We have provided several whitepapers that describe how AWS CloudFormation can help you to configure and/or install your application as well as how to bootstrap deployment and management tools that you may already use in your environment such as Chef and Puppet. The following templates accompany those whitepapers:

Template URL
Description
Launch in US West (Oregon) Region
wordpress-via-cfn-bootstrap.template Install the open source WordPress application using the AWS CloudFormation application bootstrap helper scripts. Launch Stack
wordpress-via-chef-solo.template Install the open source WordPress application using Opscode Chef Solo. Opscode Chef Solo is bootstrapped using the AWS CloudFormation application bootstrap helper scripts. Launch Stack
wordpress-via-chef-solo-building-block.template Install the open source WordPress application using Opscode Chef Solo. Opscode Chef Solo is bootstrapped using the AWS CloudFormation application bootstrap helper scripts in an embedded template chef-solo-configuration.template. Launch Stack
chef-server-ubuntu-configuration.template Install an OpsCode Chef Server. Launch Stack
wordpress-via-chef-client.template Install the open source WordPress application using Opscode Chef Client. You need to deploy a Chef Server using the previous template. Launch Stack
puppet-master-configuration.template Install a Puppet Master. Launch Stack
wordpress-via-puppet-client.template Install the open source WordPress application using the Puppet Client. You need to deploy a Puppet Master using the previous template. Launch Stack
wordpress-via-puppet-client-building-block.template Install the open source WordPress application with the Puppet Client using the Puppet configuration in an embedded template puppet-client-configuration.template. You need to deploy a Puppet Master using the previous template. Launch Stack
SampleRailsApp.template Build the default sample Rails application dynamically at runtime using the Amazon Linux AMI and Cloud-init. For more details click here. Launch Stack
Template URL Description Launch in  US West (Oregon) Region
UpdateTutorial+Part1.template, UpdateTutorial+Part2.template, UpdateTutorial+Part3.template, UpdateTutorial+Part4.template, UpdateTutorial+Part5.template Tutorial templates associated with the stack update walk-through in the AWS CloudFormation User Guide. Launch Stack
  • Simply click on the "Launch Now" link for the template you want to use in the tables above.
  • A name will automatically be filled in for the stack. Either use the one specified or change it as required.
  • Press "Continue" and follow the instructions on the screen.
  • Log into the AWS Management Console.
  • Click on the "AWS CloudFormation" tab.
  • Click the "Create Stack" button.
  • Fill in a name for your stack.
  • Click on "Provide a Template URL" and fill in the URL of the sample you want to use.
  • Press "Continue" and follow the instructions on the screen.
  • Install the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) from here.
  • Use the CloudFormation commands documented here.

CloudFormer is a prototype tool that enables you to create AWS CloudFormation templates from the existing AWS resources in your account. You can provision and configure your application resources the way you want using your existing processes and tools. Once everything is setup and you have the resources provisioned, simply take a "snapshot" of the configuration to create a template, enabling you to launch copies of the application with just a few clicks through the AWS Management Console. The CloudFormer tool is packaged as a standalone application that you can launch inside your AWS environment. The application is started on a t1.micro Amazon EC2 instance via AWS CloudFormation. No other AWS resources are required to run CloudFormer.

Click here to launch CloudFormer.


You must reference a template in an S3 bucket in the same region in which you are creating the stack. Each sample template is available in every AWS Region. You can use the same template files from each region from the following pages:

Note: CloudFormation sample templates are AWS Content under the AWS Customer Agreement and may only be used in connection with AWS CloudFormation.

Note: CloudFormation sample templates are AWS Content under the AWS Customer Agreement and may only be used in connection with AWS CloudFormation.