AWS CloudFormation Explained: IaC, Templates, Stacks and Change Sets

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AWS CloudFormation is Amazon's native Infrastructure as Code service that allows engineers to define, provision, and manage cloud resources using YAML or JSON templates instead of manual console interactions. Before IaC, infrastructure was configured manually, making it difficult to reproduce environments consistently or track changes over time. With CloudFormation, a template acts as a blueprint that the service reads and executes to build identical infrastructure across any region or account. Key benefits include version control, auditability, drift detection, and the ability to integrate infrastructure changes into CI/CD pipelines. The service supports advanced features such as parameters, mappings, conditions, intrinsic functions, change sets, and stack sets for enterprise-scale deployments.

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