Generate AWS CloudFormation templates online? Really?
Most IaC (Infrastructure as Code) tools out there are essentially Json, Yaml or other markup oriented tools. Since they don’t have much in terms of programming features, each of them come with their own specific syntax that needs to be learnt. AWS CloudFormation is no exception.
Asking to author a small CloudFormation template with few resources is not a big ask, but for an enterprise grade architecture with lots of services it becomes a challenging, lengthy, unmanageable task.
Alternatively you could use DSLs tools e.g. GoFormation, SparkleFormatin, cfndsl, Troposphere, AWS CDK that allow you to program your environment in the languague of your choice and generate cloudformation templates but that would require developers and upfront time. Infrastructure automation requires a thorough understanding of the resiliency,security, availability, best practices and focus on the functional aspects of the architecture. So you can either get a developer who can code in DSLs with sketchy understanding of infrastructure principles or a system administrator with sufficient functional understanding of the architecture but cannot code in DSLs. Many organizations face these challenges when hiring a resource for IaC and end up compromising somewhere.
Another option is to use AWS CloudFormation designer, a GUI tool provided by AWS itself. Although I hardly come across people who use it exclusively. It is a bit clumsy to use with all those windows squeezed into one, you still have to refer to Cloudformation docs side by side and do much of the json writing, generates diagrams that are too noisy to the eyes.
Yet another option is to use IDE plugins, there are few good plugins out there with some intellisense but much of the json writing is still left to the authors; there’s a set up step required, updating plugins regularly and they can get outdated easily.
Wouldn’t it be dreamy if you could generate CloudFormation templates just the way you generate IAM policies using policy generator.
Behold CloudKast — an online cloudformation template generator. It is available at https://krunal4amity.github.io and it is currently in its early days and like all good software is work in progress with more services being added to it.
CloudKast has the following features.
- It is available online. It is free. No login. No setup required.
- Intuitive interface, minimal learning curve.
- No json/yaml writing.
- suitable for junior administrators and cloud architects alike.
- validation of required properties.
- inline description of the properties.
- highlighting conditional and optional properites.
- importing an existing template.
- template validation
- intrinsic function widget
- upload template to s3 or download locally.
Since the tool is still under ‘development preview’, I would love to hear from you guys on any suggestions or improvements.
