What is an AWS CloudFormation stack?

An AWS CloudFormation stack is fundamentally a collection of AWS resources that are provisioned and managed as a single unit. This means that when you create a stack, you can define all the necessary resources you require for your application, such as EC2 instances, security groups, RDS databases, and IAM roles, in a declarative template. This allows you to manage the entire lifecycle of those resources collectively, making it easier to deploy, update, or delete them together, which significantly enhances the efficiency and repeatability of your infrastructure management.

When you work with CloudFormation, any updates or changes to the template can easily be applied to the stack, ensuring that the resources stay in sync with the defined state. This service is particularly valuable for automating infrastructure provisioning and maintaining consistency across different environments, such as development, testing, and production.