Which AWS Services Does AWS CloudFormer Support?

Which AWS Services Does AWS CloudFormer Support?

Which AWS Services Does AWS CloudFormer Support?

AWS CloudFormer is a tool that allows you to create a CloudFormation template from your existing AWS resources. CloudFormation is a service that helps you model and set up your AWS resources using code. You can use CloudFormation to automate and simplify the management of your infrastructure, as well as to replicate and track changes to your resources.

However, AWS CloudFormer is not a comprehensive tool that supports all AWS services and resources. It is an old and deprecated tool that has been in beta for many years and is not maintained by AWS. It has limited functionality and reliability, and may not work as expected.

In this blog post, we will show you which AWS services and resources are supported by AWS CloudFormer, and which ones are not. We will also explain some of the alternatives and recommendations for creating CloudFormation templates from your existing AWS resources.

What is AWS CloudFormer?

AWS CloudFormer is a template creation tool that is available as a default stack in CloudFormation. A stack is a collection of AWS resources that are created and managed as a single unit. You can launch the CloudFormer stack using the AWS Management Console or the AWS CLI.

The CloudFormer stack consists of an EC2 instance that runs a web application, and an IAM role that allows the instance to access your AWS resources. The web application provides a user interface that guides you through the process of creating a CloudFormation template from your current AWS environment.

The process involves the following steps:

  • Selecting the region where your resources are located.
  • Selecting the resources that you want to include in your template.
  • Reviewing and editing the template parameters and mappings.
  • Downloading or uploading the template to an S3 bucket.

The CloudFormer tool does not create or modify any of your existing resources. It only reads information about your resources and generates a template based on that information. The template may not be complete or accurate, and may require further editing or testing before using it to create a new stack.

Which AWS Services Does AWS CloudFormer Support?

AWS CloudFormer supports a subset of AWS services and resources that are commonly used for web applications. The supported services and resources are:

  • DNS: Route 53
  • Network: VPC, Subnets, Internet Gateway, NAT Gateway, EIP, Route Tables
  • EC2: Instances, Security Groups, Key Pairs, Load Balancers, Auto Scaling Groups, Launch Configurations
  • Storage: S3, EBS, EFS, RDS, DynamoDB, ElastiCache, Redshift
  • Other: IAM, CloudWatch Alarms, SNS Topics

The unsupported services and resources include:

  • Lambda
  • API Gateway
  • Cognito
  • Sagemaker
  • ECS
  • EKS
  • Fargate
  • CloudFront
  • Kinesis
  • SQS
  • SES
  • And many more

You can find the complete list of supported and unsupported services and resources in the CloudFormer user guide.

What are the Alternatives and Recommendations for Creating CloudFormation Templates?

AWS CloudFormer is not recommended for creating CloudFormation templates from your existing AWS resources. It is outdated, unreliable, and incomplete. You may encounter errors or issues when using it or when deploying the generated templates.

Instead, you can use one of the following alternatives or recommendations:

  • Use Former2: Former2 is a third-party tool that allows you to generate Infrastructure-as-Code outputs from your existing AWS resources. It supports more services and resources than CloudFormer, and provides a user-friendly interface and documentation. You can use Former2 to generate CloudFormation templates, as well as Terraform configurations or CDK code.
  • Use Import Resources: Import Resources is a feature of CloudFormation that allows you to import existing AWS resources into your stacks. You can use Import Resources to create a template from one or more existing resources, or to add existing resources to an existing stack. You need to provide resource identifiers and resource types for each resource that you want to import.
  • Use Resource Types Reference: Resource Types Reference is a section of the CloudFormation documentation that provides detailed information about each resource type that is supported by CloudFormation. You can use Resource Types Reference to learn how to describe your existing resources in a template format, including the required properties and attributes.
  • Use AWS CLI or SDKs: AWS CLI or SDKs are tools that allow you to interact with AWS services using commands or code. You can use AWS CLI or SDKs to list, describe, or query your existing resources and their properties. You can then use this information to create or modify your templates manually or programmatically.

Conclusion

In this blog post, we have shown you which AWS services and resources are supported by AWS CloudFormer, and which ones are not. We have also explained some of the alternatives and recommendations for creating CloudFormation templates from your existing AWS resources.

We hope this post has helped you understand how to use CloudFormation to model and manage your AWS resources using code. If you have any questions or feedback, please leave a comment below.

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