Selecting a Stack Template on the AWS CloudFormation Console

To choose a stack name and select a stack template:

1. On the Select Template screen of the Create Stack wizard, type your desired stack name in the Stack Name text box.

   A stack name must contain only alphanumeric characters and must start with an alphabetic character. The maximum length of the name is 255 characters. Stack names are case sensitive.

2. Choose a stack using one of the following options:

   • Use a sample template - choose an AWS CloudFormation template from among those available on the menu. The list of available templates in the menu is generally the same as the list of templates on the AWS CloudFormation Sample Templates web page.

     You can select CloudFormer from the list to create a stack from existing AWS resources, using the CloudFormer tool. For more information, see Using CloudFormer to Create Templates.

   • Upload a template file - choose an AWS CloudFormation template on your local system. You can enter the full path to the file in the text box, or click the Browse button to bring up a file selection dialog that you can use to select the file to upload.

     An uploaded template can be, at most, 51200 bytes.

   • Provide a template URL - provide a URL to a template in an Amazon S3 bucket.

     The URL must point to a template (max size: 307,200 bytes) in an Amazon S3 bucket that you have read permissions to, located in the same region as the stack. The URL itself can be, at most, 1024 characters long.

3. Optionally, click Show Advanced Options to select advanced options for your stack:

   

   • Notifications - choose an existing SNS topic for notifications about stack events, or create a new one.

     If you choose to create a new SNS topic, you enter its name and an email address which is used to send stack event notifications.

   • Creation timeout - select the number of minutes before stack creation times out. If the stack could not be created before the time expires, creation fails due to timeout and the stack is rolled back. If you select none, stack creation never times out.

   • Rollback on failure - choose whether the stack should be rolled back if stack creation fails. Normally, you want to accept the default value of Yes.

     Choose No if you want the stack's state retained even if creation fails, such as when you are debugging a stack template.

4. Click Continue to accept your chosen values and proceed with specifying stack parameters.