CloudFormation is infrastructure as code for AWS. You describe the resources you want in a template (YAML or JSON), and CloudFormation creates and manages them as a single unit called a stack — repeatable, version-controlled, and easy to tear down.
Why it shows up on the exam
The tell is “provision infrastructure in a repeatable, automated way” or “replicate an environment across accounts/Regions.” CloudFormation handles that natively. It’s AWS-specific; Terraform is the multi-cloud equivalent but isn’t an AWS service.
Test yourself
A team needs to deploy the same stack of AWS resources repeatedly across multiple Regions, version-controlled and automated. Which service?
- Deploy manually in the console each time
- AWS CloudFormation
- AWS Config
- Elastic Beanstalk
👉 Click to reveal the answer & explanation
Correct answer: B. CloudFormation defines infrastructure as code in reusable templates, so the same stack deploys consistently across Regions and accounts. Manual deployment (A) isn’t repeatable; Config (C) tracks configuration, it doesn’t provision; Beanstalk (D) deploys apps, not arbitrary infrastructure stacks.
Related topics
Amazon EC2 · AWS IAM · Amazon VPC
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