AWS Certified SysOps Administrator Practice Exam

What is the likely reason for a CloudFormation stack deletion process that returns without an error or success message?

1. Termination protection is enabled on the stack

2. The account has insufficient permissions to delete the stack

3. The stack has been marked for deletion by another administrator

4. The stack is undergoing a rollback process

The correct answer is: Termination protection is enabled on the stack

When a CloudFormation stack deletion process returns without an error or success message, it often indicates that the stack has termination protection enabled. Termination protection is a feature that prevents accidental deletion of stacks. When enabled, any attempt to delete the stack will simply return a message indicating that the operation cannot be completed, but it may not provide explicit details, leading to the perception that the process returned without a clear outcome. In this scenario, if termination protection is active and a delete operation is initiated, the stack remains in an unchanged state, thereby not concluding with an error or success message. This characteristic serves as a safeguard against unintentional loss of resources and ensures that cloud resources can be managed more intentionally. The other options involve conditions that would either lead to explicit error messages or different states of the stack, such as insufficient permissions, external interventions by other administrators, or ongoing rollback processes, which would not result in a silent return without a message.