Troubleshooting AWS CloudFormation StackSets - AWS CloudFormation

Troubleshooting AWS CloudFormation StackSets

This topic contains some common AWS CloudFormation StackSets issues, and suggested solutions for those issues.

Common reasons for stack operation failure

Problem: A stack operation failed, and the stack instance status is OUTDATED.

Cause: There can be several common causes for stack operation failure.

  • Insufficient permissions in a target account for creating resources that are specified in your template.

  • The AWS CloudFormation template might have errors. Validate the template in AWS CloudFormation and fix errors before trying to create your stack set.

  • The template could be trying to create global resources that must be unique but aren't, such as S3 buckets.

  • A specified target account number doesn't exist. Check the target account numbers that you specified on the Set deployment options page of the wizard.

  • The administrator account does not have a trust relationship with the target account.

  • The maximum number of a resource that is specified in your template already exists in your target account. For example, you might have reached the limit of allowed IAM roles in a target account, but the template creates more IAM roles.

  • You have reached the maximum number of stacks that are allowed in a stack set. See AWS CloudFormation limits for the maximum number of stacks per stack set.

Solution: For more information about the permissions required of target and administrator accounts before you can create stack sets, see Set up basic permissions for stack set operations.

Retrying failed stack creation or update operations

Problem: A stack creation or update failed, and the stack instance status is OUTDATED. To troubleshoot why a stack creation or update failed, open the AWS CloudFormation console, and view the events for the stack, which will have a status of DELETED (for failed create operations) or FAILED (for failed update operations). Browse the stack events, and find the Status reason column. The value of Status reason explains why the stack operation failed.

After you have fixed the underlying cause of the stack creation failure, and you are ready to retry stack creation, perform the following steps.

Solution: Perform the following steps to retry your stack operation.

  1. In the console, select the stack set that contains the stack on which the operation failed.

  2. In the Actions menu, choose Edit StackSet details to retry creating or updating stacks.

  3. On the Specify template page, to use the same AWS CloudFormation template, keep the default option, Use current template. If your stack operation failed because the template required changes, and you want to upload a revised template, choose Upload a template to Amazon S3 instead, and then choose Browse to select your updated template. When you are finished uploading your revised template, choose Next.

  4. On the Specify details page, if you are not changing any parameters that are specific to your template, choose Next.

  5. On the Set deployment options page, change defaults for Maximum concurrent accounts and Failure tolerance, if desired. For more information about these settings, see Stack set operation options.

  6. On the Review page, review your selections, and fill the checkbox to acknowledge required IAM capabilities. Choose Submit.

  7. If your stack is not successfully updated, repeat this procedure, after you've resolved any underlying issues that are preventing stack creation.

Stack instance deletion fails

Problem: A stack deletion has failed.

Cause: Stack deletion will fail for any stacks on which termination protection has been enabled.

Solution: Determine if termination protection has been enabled for the stack. If it has, disable termination protection and then perform the stack instance deletion again.

Stack import operation fails

Problem: A stack import operation fails to import existing stacks into new or existing stack sets. The stack instance is in an INOPERABLE status.

Solution: Revert the stack import operation, by completing the following tasks.

  1. Use Delete Stacks from StackSets option and enable RetainStacks during configuration, then proceed to delete stack instances from your stack set. For more information, For more information, see Delete stack instances from your stack set.

  2. You will see the stack instance of the Stackset are updated to remove the INOPERABLE stack instance.

  3. Fix the stack instances according to the import failure error and retry the stack import operation.

Stack instance failure count for StackSets operations

The stack instance failure count alerts you if stack instances fail to provision or update. These stack instances didn't deploy because of one or more of the following reasons:

  • Existing resource(s) with a similar configuration

  • Missing dependencies, such as AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles

  • Other conflicting factors

If you want to deploy with maximum concurrency, max concurrency count is one more than the failure tolerance count, at most. For example, if the failure tolerance count is 9, then max concurrency count can’t be more than 10. This will cause the operation to return SUCCEEDED even if some stack instances fail to update. The new stack instance failure count enables you to determine if the operation only conditionally succeeded because the failure tolerance count is set to allow all failures.

You can use the AWS Management Console, AWS SDK, or AWS CLI to get the failure count and filter stack instances to determine which instances need to be redeployed.

Using the console

To view the number of failed stack instances:
  1. Open the AWS CloudFormation console and choose StackSets.

  2. Choose your StackSet, and then choose the Operations tab.

  3. Choose a status in the Status column to view the status details. You will find the number of failed stack instances for a particular operation in the status details.

To view the account, region, and status of stack instances for the operation:
  1. In the status details, choose the failed stack instances count. Example: Stack instances: <number of failed stack instances>.

  2. Expand the side panel by choosing the panel header. The results in the side panel are the statuses of the stack instances after the completion of the selected operation.

To view the current stack instance details for an operation:
  1. Choose the Stack Instances tab.

  2. Filter by Last operation ID. The results are the current statuses and status reasons from the last operation to modify the instance. You can use this filter in combination with AWS account, AWS region, Detailed Status, and Drift status to further refine your search results.

Using the AWS CLI

To get the number of failed stack instances, call describe-stack-set-operation or list-stack-set-operations and see StatusDetails.

$ aws cloudformation describe-stack-set-operation --stack-set-name ss1 \ --operation-id 5550e62f-c822-4331-88fa-21c1d7bafc60
{ "StackSetOperation": { "OperationId": "5550e62f-c822-4331-88fa-21c1d7bafc60", "StackSetId": "ss1:9101ca57-49fc-4a61-a5a6-4c97b8adb08f", "Action": "CREATE", "Status": "SUCCEEDED", "OperationPreferences": { "RegionOrder": [], "FailureToleranceCount": 10, "MaxConcurrentCount": 10 }, "AdministrationRoleARN": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/AWSCloudFormationStackSetAdministrationRole", "ExecutionRoleName": "AWSCloudFormationStackSetExecutionRole", "CreationTimestamp": "2022-10-26T17:18:53.947000+00:00", "EndTimestamp": "2022-10-26T17:19:35.304000+00:00", "StatusDetails": { "FailedStackInstancesCount": 3 } } }
aws cloudformation list-stack-set-operations --stack-set-name ss1
{ "Summaries": [ { "OperationId": "5550e62f-c822-4331-88fa-21c1d7bafc60", "Action": "CREATE", "Status": "SUCCEEDED", "CreationTimestamp": "2022-10-26T17:18:53.947000+00:00", "EndTimestamp": "2022-10-26T17:19:35.304000+00:00", "StatusDetails": { "FailedStackInstancesCount": 3 }, "OperationPreferences": { "RegionOrder": [], "FailureToleranceCount": 10, "MaxConcurrentCount": 10 } } ] }

To get a historical overview for a particular operation, use list-stack-set-operation-results to view the status and status reason for each stack instance after the operation completed. See the following example to find the Status and StatusReason:

aws cloudformation list-stack-set-operation-results --stack-set-name ss1 --operation-id 5550e62f-c822-4331-88fa-21c1d7bafc60 --filters Name=OPERATION_RESULT_STATUS,Values=FAILED
{ "Summaries": [ { "Account": "123456789012", "Region": "us-west-2", "Status": "FAILED", "StatusReason": "Account 123456789012 should have 'AWSCloudFormationStackSetExecutionRole' role with trust relationship to Role 'AWSCloudFormationStackSetAdministrationRole'.", "AccountGateResult": { "Status": "SKIPPED", "StatusReason": "Account 123456789012 should have 'AWSCloudFormationStackSetExecutionRole' role with trust relationship to Role 'AWSCloudFormationStackSetAdministrationRole'." }, "OrganizationalUnitId": "" }, { "Account": "123456789012", "Region": "us-west-1", "Status": "FAILED", "StatusReason": "Account 123456789012 should have 'AWSCloudFormationStackSetExecutionRole' role with trust relationship to Role 'AWSCloudFormationStackSetAdministrationRole'.", "AccountGateResult": { "Status": "SKIPPED", "StatusReason": "Account 123456789012 should have 'AWSCloudFormationStackSetExecutionRole' role with trust relationship to Role 'AWSCloudFormationStackSetAdministrationRole'." }, "OrganizationalUnitId": "" }, { "Account": "123456789012", "Region": "us-east-1", "Status": "FAILED", "StatusReason": "Account 123456789012 should have 'AWSCloudFormationStackSetExecutionRole' role with trust relationship to Role 'AWSCloudFormationStackSetAdministrationRole'.", "AccountGateResult": { "Status": "SKIPPED", "StatusReason": "Account 123456789012 should have 'AWSCloudFormationStackSetExecutionRole' role with trust relationship to Role 'AWSCloudFormationStackSetAdministrationRole'." }, "OrganizationalUnitId": "" } ] }

Use list-stack-instances with the DETAILED_STATUS and LAST_OPERATION_ID filters to get a list of stack instances that failed in the last operation that tried to deploy the stack instance. See the --filters flag in the example with DETAILED_STATUS and LAST_OPERATION_ID:

aws cloudformation list-stack-instances --stack-set-name ss1 --filters Name=DETAILED_STATUS,Values=FAILED Name=LAST_OPERATION_ID,Values=5550e62f-c822-4331-88fa-21c1d7bafc60
{ "Summaries": [ { "StackSetId": "ss1:9101ca57-49fc-4a61-a5a6-4c97b8adb08f", "Region": "us-east-1", "Account": "123456789012", "Status": "OUTDATED", "StatusReason": "Account 123456789012 should have 'AWSCloudFormationStackSetExecutionRole' role with trust relationship to Role 'AWSCloudFormationStackSetAdministrationRole'.", "StackInstanceStatus": { "DetailedStatus": "FAILED" }, "OrganizationalUnitId": "", "DriftStatus": "NOT_CHECKED", "LastOperationId": "5550e62f-c822-4331-88fa-21c1d7bafc60" }, { "StackSetId": "ss1:9101ca57-49fc-4a61-a5a6-4c97b8adb08f", "Region": "us-west-1", "Account": "123456789012", "Status": "OUTDATED", "StatusReason": "Account 123456789012 should have 'AWSCloudFormationStackSetExecutionRole' role with trust relationship to Role 'AWSCloudFormationStackSetAdministrationRole'.", "StackInstanceStatus": { "DetailedStatus": "FAILED" }, "OrganizationalUnitId": "", "DriftStatus": "NOT_CHECKED", "LastOperationId": "5550e62f-c822-4331-88fa-21c1d7bafc60" }, { "StackSetId": "ss1:9101ca57-49fc-4a61-a5a6-4c97b8adb08f", "Region": "us-west-2", "Account": "123456789012", "Status": "OUTDATED", "StatusReason": "Account 123456789012 should have 'AWSCloudFormationStackSetExecutionRole' role with trust relationship to Role 'AWSCloudFormationStackSetAdministrationRole'.", "StackInstanceStatus": { "DetailedStatus": "FAILED" }, "OrganizationalUnitId": "", "DriftStatus": "NOT_CHECKED", "LastOperationId": "5550e62f-c822-4331-88fa-21c1d7bafc60" } ] }

To find the last operation ID to modify a stack instance, use list-stack-instances or describe-stack-instance to get the LastOperationId:

aws cloudformation describe-stack-instance --stack-set-name ss1 --stack-instance-account 123456789012 --stack-instance-region us-east-2
{ "StackInstance": { "StackSetId": "ss1:9101ca57-49fc-4a61-a5a6-4c97b8adb08f", "Region": "us-west-2", "Account": "123456789012", "ParameterOverrides": [], "Status": "OUTDATED", "StackInstanceStatus": { "DetailedStatus": "FAILED" }, "StatusReason": "Account 123456789012 should have 'AWSCloudFormationStackSetExecutionRole' role with trust relationship to Role 'AWSCloudFormationStackSetAdministrationRole'.", "OrganizationalUnitId": "", "DriftStatus": "NOT_CHECKED", "LastOperationId": "5550e62f-c822-4331-88fa-21c1d7bafc60" } }