AWS CloudFormation
An infrastructure-as-code service that provisions AWS resources from templates.
AWS CloudFormation is an infrastructure-as-code service that lets you define AWS resources in a JSON or YAML template, then provision and manage them together as a single unit called a stack. When you update the template, CloudFormation applies only the needed changes in the correct dependency order, keeping environments consistent and repeatable. A key CLF-C02 distinction is that CloudFormation manages the provisioning layer, while AWS Elastic Beanstalk is a higher-level service that also handles deployment and runtime configuration. CloudFormation gives you finer control but requires defining each resource explicitly; Beanstalk trades that control for simplicity.
PlayPrepHQ study notes are written and reviewed against primary exam sources. How we create & review content →