CODEWITHSUNDEEP
amazon-web-servicesaws-cloudformation
paul
paul

Reputation: 13481

Export AWS configuration as CloudFormation template

I´m using AWS CLI and CloudFormation, and I could not find any reference in the documentation.

Does anybody know if it´s possible to create a CloudFormation template from a current configuration.

Let´s say that I want to get a CloudFormation template from my current security group configuration.

Any idea if it´s possible to export that configuration as a template using CLI?

Upvotes: 48

Views: 38771

Answers (4)

Exequiel Barrirero
Exequiel Barrirero

Reputation: 5868

Based on our experience we found 3 possible ways to translate existing manually deployed (from Web Console UI) AWS infra to Cloudformation (CF).

  1. Using a new CloudFormation native introduced feature (since Nov 2019) that allows you to Import existing resources into a CloudFormation stack

  2. Using aws cli execute $aws service_name_here describe for each element that make up your stack eg for RDS Database Stack:

  • RDS Instance -> Type: AWS::RDS::DBInstance,
  • RDS (EC2) SG -> Type: AWS::EC2::SecurityGroup,
  • RDS Subnet Group -> Type: AWS::RDS::DBSubnetGroup and
  • RDS DB Param Group -> Type: AWS::RDS::DBParameterGroup

And manually translate to CF based on the outputs obtained from the aws cli for each of the components. This approach usually requires more experience in both AWS and CF but the templates that you are creating can be structured and designed under good practices, fully parameterized (Sub, Ref, Join, Fn::GetAtt:, Fn::ImportValue), modular, applying conditions and in a 1st iteration the result would probably be close to the final state of the templates (interesting reference examples: https://github.com/widdix/aws-cf-templates/).

Extra points! :)

  1. Some other new alternatives to export your current deployed AWS infra to Cloudformation / Terraform code:

Related Article: https://medium.com/@exequiel.barrirero/aws-export-configuration-as-code-cloudformation-terraform-b1bca8949bca

Upvotes: 31

J. Gwinner
J. Gwinner

Reputation: 1577

I had some problems getting the tradidtional tools - mentioned above - working in our environment; we have a complicated API Gateway. Former2 didnt' find it at all (although seemed ideal for other resources)

I found another tool, "Terraformer" which extracts AWS into Terraform, which can then be turned into CloudFormation -or used directly as IaC.

https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/terraformer#installation

Maybe that will work for others if the above tools don't.

Upvotes: 2

ataylor
ataylor

Reputation: 66109

In addition to CloudFormer, you might want to take a look at Bellerophon: https://github.com/arminhammer/bellerophon.

Upvotes: 6

jzonthemtn
jzonthemtn

Reputation: 3414

It's not possible using the AWS CLI but you can use the CloudFormer [1] tool to create a CloudFormation template from existing resources. I've had decent success with it. The templates aren't as "pretty" as hand-made templates but they provide a good starting point.

[1] http://aws.amazon.com/developertools/6460180344805680

Upvotes: 15

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