🧪 Lab 8: Infrastructure as Code (IaC) with AWS CloudFormation

Course: CompTIA Cloud+ CV0-004
Objective: Learn to provision infrastructure using IaC tools—in this lab, AWS CloudFormation.

🎯 Goals

📘 Part 1: Introduction to CloudFormation

CloudFormation allows you to model and provision AWS resources using JSON or YAML templates. These templates are declarative and reusable, helping enforce consistency and compliance.

✅ Checkpoint: Know what a CloudFormation template is and when to use one.

⚙️ Part 2: Create a Simple CloudFormation Template

Create a file named simple-ec2.yaml:

AWSTemplateFormatVersion: '2010-09-09'
Description: Simple EC2 instance with security group

Resources:
  EC2Instance:
    Type: 'AWS::EC2::Instance'
    Properties:
      InstanceType: t2.micro
      ImageId: ami-0c02fb55956c7d316  # Amazon Linux 2 in us-east-1
      KeyName: cloudplus-key
      SecurityGroups:
        - !Ref EC2SecurityGroup

  EC2SecurityGroup:
    Type: 'AWS::EC2::SecurityGroup'
    Properties:
      GroupDescription: Enable SSH
      SecurityGroupIngress:
        - IpProtocol: tcp
          FromPort: 22
          ToPort: 22
          CidrIp: 0.0.0.0/0

✅ Checkpoint: Validate your YAML file using a linter or CloudFormation designer.

🚀 Part 3: Deploy the Template via Console

  1. Go to CloudFormation in AWS Console
  2. Choose Create Stack → With new resources (standard)
  3. Upload simple-ec2.yaml
  4. Name the stack CloudPlusLab8
  5. Follow prompts and Create Stack

✅ Checkpoint: A new EC2 instance and security group are created.

🧹 Part 4: Clean Up

  1. In CloudFormation → select the CloudPlusLab8 stack
  2. Choose Delete
  3. Confirm to tear down the resources

✅ Checkpoint: Stack and all associated resources are removed.

✅ Lab Complete