Stacks, Parameters, and Outputs

~10 min read

How CloudFormation organizes resources into a manageable unit, and makes templates reusable across environments.

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Key points

  • A Stack is the deployable, manageable unit grouping all resources from one template
  • Parameters make one template reusable across environments/accounts with different input values
  • Outputs expose specific stack values for external use, including cross-stack references
  • Splitting infrastructure into multiple logically-related stacks (using outputs/cross-stack references) improves manageability over one giant monolithic template