cfnc

A command-line tool for managing CloudFormation Stacks at scale.

By Balman Rawat, started as an experiment project at CloudFactory

Features

Create/Update/Delete multiple CloudFormation stacks parallely or sequentially
Customize the CloudFormation stacks dependency using yaml config
Delete multiple CloudFormation stacks respecting the creation sequence
DryRun mode to plan the change
Generate/Validate/visualize configuration with ease
Supports Go Templating for dynamic value substitution

Demo

Overview

As the infrastrucutre evolves and gets complicated we need to manage/maintain multiple CloudFormation Stacks. When we want to create/update/delete these stacks we need to manually apply the actions one at a time. Deletion mostly in dev/test environment can be hectic as we should delete the stacks in the reverse of creation order. cfnc helps to manage multiple stacks that are closely related using declarative language.

overview image

Usage

➜ cfnc --help
Manage cloudformation stacks at scale. Design and deploy multiple cloudformation stacks either in sequence or in prallel using declarative configuration

Usage:
  cfnc [command]

Available Commands:
  completion  Generate the autocompletion script for the specified shell
  config      Generate, validate and visualize the compose configuration
  deploy      Deploys the stacks based on the sequence specified in the compose configuration
  destroy     Destroys all the stacks in the reverse order of creation
  help        Help about any command

Flags:
  -c, --config string     File path to compose file (default "cfn-compose.yml")
  -d, --dry-run           Run commands in dry run mode
  -h, --help              help for cfnc
  -l, --loglevel string   Specify Log Levels. Valid Levels are: DEBUG, INFO, WARN, ERROR (default "INFO")
  -v, --version           version for cfnc

Use "cfnc [command] --help" for more information about a command.

Examples

## Deploy
cfnc deploy
## Deploy in dry run mode
cfnc deploy -d

## Destroy
cfnc destroy
## Destroy in dry run mode
cfnc destroy -d

## Generate Validate and Visualize compose configuration
cfnc config generate
cfnc config validate
cfnc config visualize

Man

Command	Options	Description
cfnc	-h, --help, help	Get description of cfnc
cfnc	-d, --dry-run	enable dry run mode
cfnc	-l, --loglevel	Specify Log Levels. Valid Levels are: DEBUG, INFO, WARN, ERROR (default "INFO")
cfnc	-c, --config	File path to compose file (default "cfn-compose.yml")
cfnc deploy	with no flag	deploys all the stacks
cfnc deploy	-f, --flow	Cherry pick specific flow to deploy
cfnc destroy	with no flag	destroys all the stacks
cfnc destroy	-f, --flow	Cherry pick specific flow to destroy
cfnc config generate	no flags	Generates compose template
cfnc config validate	no flags	Validates the compose configuration
cfnc config visualize	no flags	Visualize the stacks dependencies and creation order
cfnc	-v, --version	version for cfnc

Compose Configuration

Syntax:

Description: Sample CloudFormation Compose file
Vars:
  Key: Value
Flows:
  Flow1:
    Order: 0
    Description: Flow1 Description
    Stacks:
    - Stack1
    - Stack2
  Flow2:
    Order: 1
    Description: Flow2 description
    Stacks:
    - Stack1
    - Stack2

A typical compose configuration contains:

Optional Description
Optional Vars section to define variables in Key: Value mapping eg:

Vars:
  ENV_TYPE: "nonproduction"
  ENV_NAME: "demo"
  AWS_PROFILE: "demo"

Mandatory Flows: section Flow is a collection of CloudFormation stacks that are deployed sequentially. Flows is collection of flows which can be ordered using Order property. Flows can run in parallel or sequentially based on the Order property.
- Optional Order can be any unsigned integer. Default Order is set to 0. Flow with lowest orders are deployed first.
- Optinal Description
- Mandatory Stacks which is the collection of CFN stack. Below are the supported attributes of the stack object
  - mandatory template_file or template_url (only s3 url)
  - mandatory stack_name
  - optinal capabilities
  - optinal parameters
  - optinal tags
  - optinal tags

Sample:

Description: Sample CloudFormation Compose file
Vars:
  ENV_NAME: cfnc
  ENV_TYPE: nonproduction
Flows:
  SecurityGroup:
    Order: 0
    Description: Creates SecurityGroup
    Stacks:
    - template_file: <cfn-template-path>
      stack_name: stack-name1
      parameters:
        EnvironmentName: '{{ .ENV_NAME }}'
        EnvironmentType: '{{ .ENV_TYPE }}'
      tags:
        EnvironmentName: '{{ .ENV_NAME }}'
        EnvironmentType: '{{ .ENV_TYPE }}'

  EC2Instance:
    Order: 1
    Description: Deploying EC2 Instance
    Stacks:
    - template_file: <cfn-template-path>
      stack_name: stack-name2
      parameters:
        EnvironmentName: '{{ .ENV_NAME }}'
        EnvironmentType: '{{ .ENV_TYPE }}'
      tags:
        EnvironmentName: '{{ .ENV_NAME }}'
        EnvironmentType: '{{ .ENV_TYPE }}'

Details Example

Limitations

Supports limited CFN attributes
No Retry Mechanism
No Configurable worker pool. One Go routine is spun for every flow.
Single Compose Configuration can only have up to 50 flows and each flow can contain only upto 50 stacks

Installation

Binary is available for Linux, Windows and Mac OS (amd64 and arm64). Download the binary for your respective platform from the releases page.

Linux:

curl -sSLO https://github.com/rbalman/cfn-compose/releases/download/v0.0.3-beta/cfnc-v0.0.3-beta-linux-amd64.tar.gz

tar zxf cfnc-v0.0.3-beta-linux-amd64.tar.gz

sudo install -m 0755 cfnc /usr/local/bin/cfnc

macOS (Intel):

curl -sSLO https://github.com/rbalman/cfn-compose/releases/download/v0.0.3-beta/cfnc-v0.0.3-beta-darwin-amd64.tar.gz

tar zxf cfnc-v0.0.3-beta-darwin-amd64.tar.gz

sudo install -m 0755 cfnc /usr/local/bin/cfnc

macOS (Apple Silicon):

curl -sSLO https://github.com/rbalman/cfn-compose/releases/download/v0.0.3-beta/cfnc-v0.0.3-beta-darwin-arm64.tar.gz

tar zxf cfnc-v0.0.3-beta-darwin-arm64.tar.gz

sudo install -m 0755 cfnc /usr/local/bin/cfnc

Windows:

curl -sSLO https://github.com/rbalman/cfn-compose/releases/download/v0.0.3-beta/cfnc-v0.0.3-beta-windows-amd64.zip

unzip cfnc-v0.0.3-beta-windows-amd64.zip

Contribution

There is a lot of room for enhancements and you are more than welcome to contribute. If any concerns or recommendations create issues. If want to contribute create PR

# README