CloudFormation
CloudFormation automatically creates and configures your AWS infrastructure from code that defines the resources you want it to create and how you want those resources configured.
Templates
The code that defines your resources is stored in text files called templates. Templates use the proprietary CloudFormation language, which can be written in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) or YAML format.
Templates contain a description of the AWS resources you want CloudFormation to create, so they simultaneously function as infrastructure documentation. Because templates are files, you can store them in a version-controlled system such as an S3 bucket or a Git repository, allowing you to track changes over time.
You can use the same template to build AWS infrastructure repeatedly, such as for development or testing. You can also use a single template to build many similar environments. For example, you can use one template to create identical resources for both production and...
