AWS Cloudfromation and autoscaling : The requested configuration is currently not supported. Launching EC2 instance failed

Question

I want to replicate the infrastructure from one region(us-east-1) to another(us-east-2). so,I have generated a cloudfromation template of an existing infrastructure with the help of cloudformer tool.

    "asgamazonecsclisetupapijoulebugprodEcsInstanceAsg1EIBNOXSXJ7HD": {
  "Type": "AWS::AutoScaling::AutoScalingGroup",
  "Properties": {
    "AvailabilityZones": [
      "us-east-2b",
      "us-east-2c"
    ],
    "Cooldown": "300",
    "DesiredCapacity": "3",
    "HealthCheckGracePeriod": "300",
    "HealthCheckType": "ELB",
    "MaxSize": "16",
    "MinSize": "3",
    "VPCZoneIdentifier": [
      {
        "Ref": "subnet81c8ebab"
      },
      {
        "Ref": "subnet5df40214"
      }
    ],
    "LaunchConfigurationName": {
      "Ref": "lcamazonecsclisetupapijoulebugprodAMI2017d"
    },
    "LoadBalancerNames": [
      {

        "Ref": "elbJBAPILiveCleanbit2016"
      }
    ],
    "Tags": [
      {
        "Key": "Name",
        "Value": "Live - Cleanbit2016 - joulebug-api",
        "PropagateAtLaunch": true
      }
    ],
    "TerminationPolicies": [
      "Default"
    ]
  }
},
"lcamazonecsclisetupapijoulebugprodAMI2017d": {
  "Type": "AWS::AutoScaling::LaunchConfiguration",
  "Properties": {
    "AssociatePublicIpAddress": true,
    "ImageId": "ami-0e6d83442546978bc",
    "InstanceType": "c3.large",
    "KeyName": "cleanbit2016_vpc",
    "IamInstanceProfile": "amazon-ecs-cli-setup-api-joulebug-prod-EcsInstanceProfile-1M4GOHBP3FP5L",
    "InstanceMonitoring": "true",
    "SecurityGroups": [
      {
        "Ref": "sgCleanbit2016WebServerSG"
      }
    ],
    "BlockDeviceMappings": [
      {
        "DeviceName": "/dev/xvda",
        "Ebs": {
          "SnapshotId": "snap-0b2477be9c863d014",
          "VolumeSize": 8
        }
      },
      {
        "DeviceName": "/dev/xvdcz",
        "Ebs": {
          "VolumeSize": 22
        }
      }
    ]
  }
},
"elbJBAPILiveCleanbit2016": {
  "Type": "AWS::ElasticLoadBalancing::LoadBalancer",
  "Properties": {
    "Policies": [
      {
        "PolicyName": "AWSConsole-SSLNegotiationPolicy-JB-API-Live-Cleanbit2016-1467998170471",
        "PolicyType": "SSLNegotiationPolicyType",
          }
    ],
    }
    }
    "subnet81c8ebab": {
  "Type": "AWS::EC2::Subnet",
  "Properties": {
    "CidrBlock": "10.0.3.0/24",
    "AvailabilityZone": "us-east-2b",
    "VpcId": {
      "Ref": "vpcdcbd08bb"
    },
    "Tags": [
      {
        "Key": "Name",
        "Value": "Cleanbit2016 - Public 1b"
      }
    ]
  }
},
 "sgCleanbit2016WebServerSG": {
  "Type": "AWS::EC2::SecurityGroup",
  "Properties": {
    "GroupDescription": "Web server security group for public subnet in vpc.",
    "VpcId": {
      "Ref": "vpcdcbd08bb"
    },
    "Tags": [
      {
        "Key": "Name",
        "Value": "Cleanbit2016_ WebServerSG"
      }
    ]
  }
},

While launching the template in other region(us-east-2), it is throwing following error:

The requested configuration is currently not supported. Please check the documentation for supported configurations. Launching EC2 instance failed.

Answer 1

After a lot of debugging, when I started launching the things manually, I found the same error and I got to know that c3.large is causing the error. When I launch the template with c4.large it successfully launched the template from us-east-1 to us-east-2.

Answer 2

You have not provided enough information to be able to diagnose the situation.

I took your template, removed the portions that were incomplete (eg removed the Load Balancer because it was missing Listeners), simplified a few things and it works fine:

{
    "AWSTemplateFormatVersion": "2010-09-09",
    "Resources": {
        "VPC": {
            "Type": "AWS::EC2::VPC",
            "Properties": {
                "CidrBlock": "10.0.0.0/16",
                "Tags": [
                    {
                        "Key": "Name",
                        "Value": "Lab VPC"
                    }
                ]
            }
        },
        "ASG": {
            "Type": "AWS::AutoScaling::AutoScalingGroup",
            "Properties": {
                "AvailabilityZones": [
                    "us-east-2b",
                    "us-east-2c"
                ],
                "Cooldown": "300",
                "DesiredCapacity": "1",
                "HealthCheckGracePeriod": "300",
                "MaxSize": "16",
                "MinSize": "1",
                "VPCZoneIdentifier": [
                    {
                        "Ref": "Subnet1"
                    },
                    {
                        "Ref": "Subnet2"
                    }
                ],
                "LaunchConfigurationName": {
                    "Ref": "LaunchConfig"
                }
            }
        },
        "LaunchConfig": {
            "Type": "AWS::AutoScaling::LaunchConfiguration",
            "Properties": {
                "AssociatePublicIpAddress": true,
                "ImageId": "ami-0b59bfac6be064b78",
                "InstanceType": "t2.micro",
                "InstanceMonitoring": "true",
                "SecurityGroups": [
                    {
                        "Ref": "WebServerSG"
                    }
                ]
            }
        },
        "Subnet1": {
            "Type": "AWS::EC2::Subnet",
            "Properties": {
                "CidrBlock": "10.0.0.0/24",
                "AvailabilityZone": "us-east-2b",
                "VpcId": {
                    "Ref": "VPC"
                },
                "Tags": [
                    {
                        "Key": "Name",
                        "Value": "Public 1"
                    }
                ]
            }
        },
        "Subnet2": {
            "Type": "AWS::EC2::Subnet",
            "Properties": {
                "CidrBlock": "10.0.1.0/24",
                "AvailabilityZone": "us-east-2c",
                "VpcId": {
                    "Ref": "VPC"
                },
                "Tags": [
                    {
                        "Key": "Name",
                        "Value": "Public 2"
                    }
                ]
            }
        },
        "WebServerSG": {
            "Type": "AWS::EC2::SecurityGroup",
            "Properties": {
                "GroupDescription": "Web server security group for public subnet in vpc.",
                "VpcId": {
                    "Ref": "VPC"
                },
                "Tags": [
                    {
                        "Key": "Name",
                        "Value": "WebServerSG"
                    }
                ]
            }
        }
    }
}

Therefore, your problem lies in part of the template you did not provide.

You could start with this version, then progressively add back parts of your template until you discover what is causing the error.

Answer 3

If you wish to create a CloudFormation template that can run in multiple regions, you should not refer to specific Availability Zones (eg us-east-2b).

You can use Fn::GetAZs - AWS CloudFormation to obtain a list of AZs in region.

Answer 4

You don't have details of the regions you're using, but if you are trying to do this outside of us-east-1 the Availablility Zones won't work. It also looks like you have a number of other parts of the stack hard-coded, which may not work in another region.

And if you are trying to do this in us-east-1, there is the possibility that one of the AZs is unavailable to you - see this question for more details.