Overview of stack failure options Required conditions for pausing stack rollback Preserve successfully provisioned resources (console)Preserve successfully provisioned resources (AWS CLI)

Choose how to handle failures when provisioning resources

If your stack operation fails, you don't have to roll back resources that were already successfully provisioned and start over from the beginning every time. Instead, you can troubleshoot resources in a CREATE_FAILED or UPDATE_FAILED status, and then resume provisioning from the point where the problem occurred.

To do this, you must enable the preserve successfully provisioned resources option. This option is available for all stack deployments and change set operations.

For stack creation, if you choose the Preserve successfully provisioned resources option, CloudFormation preserves the state of resources that were successfully created and leaves the failed ones in a failed state until the next update operation is performed.
During update and change set operations, choosing Preserve successfully provisioned resources preserves the state of successful resources while rolling back failed resources to their last known stable state. Failed resources will be in an UPDATE_FAILED state. Resources without a last known stable state will be deleted upon the next stack operation.

Topics

Overview of stack failure options
Required conditions for pausing stack rollback
Preserve successfully provisioned resources (console)
Preserve successfully provisioned resources (AWS CLI)

Overview of stack failure options

Before issuing an operation from the CloudFormation console, API, or AWS CLI, specify the behavior for provisioned resource failure. Then, proceed with the deployment process of your resources without any other modifications. In the event of an operational failure, CloudFormation stops at the first failure in each independent provisioning path. CloudFormation identifies dependencies between resources to parallelize independent provisioning actions. Then it proceeds to provision resources on each independent provisioning path until it encounters a failure. A failure in one path doesn’t affect other provisioning paths. CloudFormation will continue to provision the resources until completion or stop on a different failure.

Remediate any issues to continue the deployment process. CloudFormation performs the necessary updates before retrying provisioning actions on resources that couldn’t be successfully provisioned earlier. You remediate issues by submitting a Retry, Update, or Roll back operations. For example, if you're provisioning an Amazon EC2 instance and the EC2 instance fails during a create operation, you might want to investigate the error, rather than rolling back the failed resource right away. You can review system status checks and instances status checks, and then select the Retry operation once the issues is resolved.

When a stack operation fails, and you've specified Preserve successfully provisioned resources from the Stack failure options menu, you can select the following options.

Retry – Retries provisioning operation on failed resources and continues provisioning the template until the successful completion of the stack operation or the next failure. Select this option if the resource failed to provision due to an issue that doesn't require template modifications, such as an AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) permission.
Update – Resources that have been provisioned are updated on template updates. Resources that failed to create or update will be retried. Select this option if the resource failed to provision due to template errors, and you've modified the template. When you update a stack that's in a FAILED state, you must select Preserve successfully provisioned resources for the Stack failure options to continue updating your stack.
Roll back – CloudFormation rolls back the stack to the last known stable state.

Required conditions for pausing stack rollback

To prevent CloudFormation from automatically rolling back and deleting the resources that were successfully created, the following conditions must be met.

When you create or update the stack, you must choose the option to Preserve successfully provisioned resources. This tells CloudFormation not to delete the resources that were created successfully, even if the overall stack operation fails.
The stack operation must have failed, meaning the stack status is either CREATE_FAILED or UPDATE_FAILED.

Note

Immutable update types aren't supported.

Preserve successfully provisioned resources (console)

Create stack

To preserve successfully provisioned resources during a create stack operation

Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the AWS CloudFormation console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudformation.
Choose Create stack and select With new resources (standard).
On the Specify template page, choose a stack template by using one of the following options:
- Template is ready
- Use a sample template
- Build from Infrastructure Composer
Accept your settings and select Next.
On the Specify stack details page, enter a stack name in the Stack name box.
In the Parameters section, specify parameters that are defined in your stack template.

You can use or change any parameters with default values.
When you're satisfied with the parameter values, choose Next.
On the Configure stack options page, you can set additional options for your stack.
For Stack failure options, select Preserve successfully provisioned resources.
When you're satisfied with the stack options, choose Next.
Review your stack on the Review page and select Create stack.

Results: Resources that failed to create transition the stack status to CREATE_FAILED to prevent the stack from rolling back when the stack operation encounters a failure. Resources that are successfully provisioned are in a CREATE_COMPLETE state. You can monitor the stack in the Stack events tab.

Update stack

To preserve successfully provisioned resources during an update stack operation

Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the AWS CloudFormation console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudformation.
Select the stack you want to update and then choose Update.
On the Update stack page, choose a stack template by using one of the following options:
- Use current template
- Replace current template
- Edit template in Infrastructure Composer
Accept your settings and select Next.
On the Specify stack details page, specify parameters that are defined in your stack template.

You can use or change any parameters with default values.
When you're satisfied with the parameter values, choose Next.
On the Configure stack options page, you can set additional options for your stack.
For the Behavior on provisioning failure, select Preserve successfully provisioned resources.
When you're satisfied with the stack options, choose Next.
Review your stack on the Review page and select Update stack.

Results: Resources that failed to update transition the stack status to UPDATE_FAILED and roll back to the last known stable state. Resources without a last known stable state will be deleted by CloudFormation upon the next stack operation. Resources that are successfully provisioned are in a CREATE_COMPLETE or UPDATE_COMPLETE state. You can monitor the stack in the Stack events tab.

Change set

Note

You can initiate a change set for a stack with a status of CREATE_FAILED or UPDATE_FAILED, but not for a status of UPDATE_ROLLBACK_FAILED.

To Preserve successfully provisioned resources during a change set operation

Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the AWS CloudFormation console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudformation.
Select the stack that contains the change set you want to initiate, and then choose the Change sets tab.
Select the change set and then choose Execute.
For Execute change set, select the Preserve successfully provisioned resources option.
Select Execute change set.

Preserve successfully provisioned resources (AWS CLI)

Create stack

To preserve successfully provisioned resources during a stack create operation

Specify the --disable-rollback option or on-failure DO_NOTHING enumeration during a create-stack operation.

Provide a stack name and template to the create-stack command with the --disable-rollback option.


aws cloudformation create-stack --stack-name myteststack \
    --template-body file://template.yaml \
    --disable-rollback

The command returns the following output.


{
    "StackId": "arn:aws:cloudformation:us-east-1:123456789012:stack/myteststack/466df9e0-0dff-08e3-8e2f-5088487c4896"
}

Describe the state of the stack using the describe-stacks command.


aws cloudformation describe-stacks --stack-name myteststack

The command returns the following output.


{
    "Stacks":  [
        {
            "StackId": "arn:aws:cloudformation:us-east-1:123456789012:stack/myteststack/466df9e0-0dff-08e3-8e2f-5088487c4896",
            "Description": "AWS CloudFormation Sample Template",
            "Tags": [],
            "Outputs": [],
            "StackStatusReason": “The following resource(s) failed to create: [MyBucket]”,
            "CreationTime": "2013-08-23T01:02:15.422Z",
            "Capabilities": [],
            "StackName": "myteststack",
            "StackStatus": "CREATE_FAILED",
            "DisableRollback": true
        }
    ]
}

Update stack

To preserve successfully provisioned resources during a stack update operation

Provide an existing stack name and template to the update-stack command with the --disable-rollback option.


aws cloudformation update-stack --stack-name myteststack \
    --template-url https://s3.amazonaws.com/amzn-s3-demo-bucket/updated.template --disable-rollback

The command returns the following output.


{
    "StackId": "arn:aws:cloudformation:us-east-1:123456789012:stack/myteststack/466df9e0-0dff-08e3-8e2f-5088487c4896"
}

Describe the state of the stack using either the describe-stacks or describe-stack-events command.


aws cloudformation describe-stacks --stack-name myteststack

The command returns the following output.


{
    "Stacks":  [
        {
            "StackId": "arn:aws:cloudformation:us-east-1:123456789012:stack/myteststack/466df9e0-0dff-08e3-8e2f-5088487c4896",
            "Description": "AWS CloudFormation Sample Template",
            "Tags": [],
            "Outputs": [],
            "CreationTime": "2013-08-23T01:02:15.422Z",
            "Capabilities": [],
            "StackName": "myteststack",
            "StackStatus": "UPDATE_COMPLETE",
            "DisableRollback": true
        }
    ]
}

Change set

Note

You can initiate a change set for a stack with a status of CREATE_FAILED or UPDATE_FAILED but not for a status of UPDATE_ROLLBACK_FAILED.

To preserve successfully provisioned resources during a change set operation

Specify the --disable-rollback option during an execute-change-set operation.

Provide a stack name and template to the execute-change-set command with the --disable-rollback option.


aws cloudformation execute-change-set --stack-name myteststack \
    --change-set-name my-change-set --template-body file://template.yaml

The command returns the following output.


{
 "Id": "arn:aws:cloudformation:us-east-1:123456789012:changeSet/my-change-set/bc9555ba-a949-xmpl-bfb8-f41d04ec5784",
 "StackId": "arn:aws:cloudformation:us-east-1:123456789012:stack/myteststack/466df9e0-0dff-08e3-8e2f-5088487c4896"
}

Initiate the change set with --disable-rollback option.


aws cloudformation execute-change-set --stack-name myteststack \
    --change-set-name my-change-set -–disable-rollback

Determine the status of the stack using either the describe-stacks or describe-stack-events command.


aws cloudformation describe-stack-events --stack-name myteststack

The command returns the following output.


{
   "StackEvents": [
     {
        "StackId": "arn:aws:cloudformation:us-east-1:123456789012:stack/myteststack/466df9e0-0dff-08e3-8e2f-5088487c4896",
        "EventId": "49c966a0-7b74-11ea-8071-024244bb0672",
        "StackName": "myteststack",
        "LogicalResourceId": " MyBucket",
        "PhysicalResourceId": "myteststack-MyBucket-abcdefghijk1",
        "ResourceType": "AWS::S3::Bucket",
        "Timestamp": "2020-04-10T21:43:17.015Z",
        "ResourceStatus": "UPDATE_FAILED"
        "ResourceStatusReason": "User XYZ is not allowed to perform S3::UpdateBucket on MyBucket"
     }
}

Fix permissions errors and retry the operation.


aws cloudformation update-stack --stack-name myteststack \
    --use-previous-template --disable-rollback

The command returns the following output.


{
    "StackId": "arn:aws:cloudformation:us-east-1:123456789012:stack/myteststack/466df9e0-0dff-08e3-8e2f-5088487c4896"
}

Describe the state of the stack using either the describe-stacks or describe-stack-events command.


aws cloudformation describe-stacks --stack-name myteststack

The command returns the following output.


{
    "Stacks":  [
        {
            "StackId": "arn:aws:cloudformation:us-east-1:123456789012:stack/myteststack/466df9e0-0dff-08e3-8e2f-5088487c4896",
            "Description": "AWS CloudFormation Sample Template",
            "Tags": [],
            "Outputs": [],
            "CreationTime": "2013-08-23T01:02:15.422Z",
            "Capabilities": [],
            "StackName": "myteststack",
            "StackStatus": "UPDATE_COMPLETE",
            "DisableRollback": true
        }
    ]
}

Rolling back a stack

You can use the rollback-stack command to roll back a stack with a CREATE_FAILED or UPDATE_FAILED stack status to its last stable state.

The following rollback-stack command rolls back the specified stack.


aws cloudformation rollback-stack --stack-name myteststack

The command returns the following output.


{
    "StackId": "arn:aws:cloudformation:us-east-1:123456789012:stack/myteststack/466df9e0-0dff-08e3-8e2f-5088487c4896"
}

Note

The rollback-stack operation will delete a stack if it doesn't contain a last known stable state.

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Document Conventions

Determine the cause of a stack failure

Roll back your stack on alarm breach