Understanding Drift in CloudFormation and Infrastructure as Code

In this episode, we discuss the concept of CloudFormation drift, what causes it, how to detect it, and strategies for resolving it. We explain that drift happens when the actual state of resources diverges from what is defined in the CloudFormation templates. Common causes include manual changes, third party tools, mixing IaC solutions, and automation. We then cover built-in drift detection in CloudFormation and integrating it with alarms. Finally, we suggest approaches for reconciling drift like change sets, deletion protection, and bringing up parallel stacks.

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In this episode, we mentioned the following resources:

• Ep 31 - CloudFormation or Terraform: https://awsbites.com/31-cloudformation-or-terraform/
• Ep. 121 - 5 Ways to extend CloudFormation: https://awsbites.com/121-5-ways-to-extend-cloudformation/
• Automatic Drift detection (AWS tutorial): https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/mt/implementing-an-alarm-to-automatically-detect-drift-in-aws-cloudformation-stacks
• Ep. 11 - How do you move away from the management console: https://awsbites.com/11-how-do-you-move-away-from-the-management-console/

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