CloudFormation as best practice

CloudFormation is infrastructure as code (IaC), so your stack template is the source of truth.

That means:

• If someone changes resources manually (outside CloudFormation):

  • You can detect drift (CloudFormation Drift Detection).
  • You can re-apply the stack to bring it back into compliance.

• If someone modifies the template in Git/repo incorrectly:

  • You’ll catch it with code reviews / CI checks / cfn-guard rules.
  • If it still gets deployed, you can roll back to a previous version of the template.

So yes — CloudFormation gives you a way to recover from misconfigurations by redeploying the known-good template.

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What it does not do by itself

• CloudFormation doesn’t stop someone from creating a separate RDS instance manually in the console.
• It doesn’t magically fix bad parameters unless you enforce guardrails (like Service Catalog, SCPs, Config rules).
• If data is impacted (e.g., DB deleted with no backups), IaC won’t restore the data — only the infrastructure. That’s why backups and deletion protection are best practices.

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How to make recovery safer

1. Enable RDS deletion protection → prevents accidental DB drops.
2. Automated backups & snapshots → ensures data can be restored even if infra is rebuilt.
3. Use Git version control for templates → rollback to last working state.
4. Use CloudFormation Drift Detection → see if someone changed the stack outside IaC.

But to make it bulletproof, you need backups + guardrails in addition to IaC.

                ┌──────────────────────────┐
                │   Git Repo (IaC Code)    │
                │  - CloudFormation YAML   │
                │  - Best practices baked  │
                └─────────────┬────────────┘
                              │
                              ▼
                    ┌─────────────────┐
                    │   CI/CD Pipeline │
                    │ - cfn-lint       │
                    │ - cfn-guard rules│
                    └─────────┬───────┘
                              │
                              ▼
                    ┌─────────────────────┐
                    │ CloudFormation Stack │
                    │ - Creates RDS safely │
                    │ - Enforces defaults  │
                    └─────────┬───────────┘
                              │
               ┌──────────────┴─────────────────┐
               │                                │
               ▼                                ▼
   ┌────────────────────┐             ┌──────────────────────┐
   │ AWS Config Rules    │             │ Automated Backups &  │
   │ - Detect drift      │             │ Snapshots            │
   │ - Check encryption  │             │ - Deletion protection│
   │ - Check no public   │             │ - Point-in-time      │
   └─────────┬───────────┘             └───────────┬─────────┘
             │                                     │
             ▼                                     ▼
   ┌──────────────────────┐              ┌──────────────────────────┐
   │ If misconfigured:    │              │ If DB deleted/corrupted: │
   │ - Roll back template │              │ - Restore from snapshot  │
   │ - Re-deploy good IaC │              │ - Reapply CFN template   │
   └──────────────────────┘              └──────────────────────────┘