Updating CloudFormation Stacks with Direct Updates and Change Sets

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Updating CloudFormation Stacks with Direct Updates and Change Sets

In this hands-on lab, we will walk through proper ways to update CloudFormation stacks. We will first update a stack with direct updates and then use change sets to update a stack. In the process, we will create multiple change sets and view the behavior of the stack when a change set is applied.

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Lab Info

Level

Intermediate

Last updated

Sep 22, 2025

Duration

1h 0m

Challenge

Deploy a LAMP Stack Using an AWS CloudFormation Template
- Navigate to the CloudFormation console to create the stack.
- Upload the LAMP stack template provided with the lab and create the stack.
- Change* InstanceType* to t3.micro.
- Select your VPC and two subnets in the template.
  
  Note: You will need to create a key pair in the EC2 console before you can deploy the template.
- Once it is deployed, check the CloudFormation outputs for the DNS name of the load balancer.
- Copy the URL into a browser to verify the sample site has deployed correctly.
Challenge

Use an Update Stack to Scale Up
- In the CloudFormation console, using the same template, update the stack and change the instance type from t3.micro to t3.medium on the Parameters page.
- Using the load balancer URL, verify that our server comes up and the site becomes available once more.
Challenge

Use a Change Set to Scale Out
- In the CloudFormation console, upload the changeset.yaml template to add a second server in another subnet and ensure that it is added to the load balancer.
- View and then execute the change set.
- Once it is finished, use the load balancer DNS name to confirm the site is up and running.

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