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amazon-web-servicesamazon-ec2aws-cloudformationautoscaling

How do I force a CloudFormation stack to update when the parameter is updated?

I am running a AWS CloudFormation stack that takes in some parameters and launches EC2 instances along with other AWS resources. The parameters are fed into the user data of the EC2 instance and based on that changes are made dynamically to the web application residing on the EC2 instance.

CFN Parameters

UserData: 
      Fn::Base64: 
        Fn::Join: 
          - ""
          - 
            - "#!/bin/bash \n"
            - "sh website-conf/website_mysql_config.sh "
            - " -c \""
            - 
              Ref: "CompanyName"

As shown in the example above, CompanyName is one of the many parameters passed to the userdata script. The problem is, when any one or multiple of parameters are updated, CloudFormation does not detect that and instead throws this error.

CFN Error

So, in order to update the stack, I have to edit the stack and make changes to the ASG so that CloudFormation 'sees' the changes and executes the stack update.

Is there a way to force CFN to update the stack when the parameters are updated?

Solution

  • Use the AWS CLI Update-Stack command. If you use the AWS CLI you can inject parameters into your stack so any change to any of the parameters result in a new stack. I do this myself to inject the Git/version commit ID into UserData so simply committing changes to the stack's JSON/Yaml to Git will allow stack updates. Any change to the parameters file will allow stack updates, even just a comment. I reference my Git commit ID in UserData the same way you are referencing Ref:CompanyName so when I change the Git commit ID the userData section is updated on stack updates.

    Update Stack Command

    aws cloudformation update-stack --stack-name MyStack --template-body file:///Users/Documents/Git/project/cloudformation/stack.json --parameters file:///Users/Documents/Git/project/cloudformation/parameters/stack-parameters.dev.json --capabilities CAPABILITY_IAM

    Process

    With this approach you make your parameters changes to the parameters json or yaml file then check it into version control. Now if you use a build server you can update your stack by checking out master and just running that one line above. Using AWS CodeBuild makes this easy so you don't need jenkins.